I posted this last week from my phone over at Weasyl, but now that I’m back at work (as of yesterday), I can’t post here now, too.  :)

Howdy everyone!   How have you all been?   Well…today the wind is howling and they’ve stated we’re under “blizzard conditions”.   It started out as rain earlier today, we were still around 50-degrees (Fahrenheit)—as the day went on and the wind picked up, it changed to sleet and gave us some nice slipperiness on all the pavement areas.  Now it’s become snow and the warning is for the area until about noon tomorrow.   I thought I’d take some time while I hope the wind will die down, before I head off to bed.

I had my spinal fusion surgery on the 25th of February and was in the hospital overnight, mostly because it was too late in the day to do discharge stuff.  There’s no way normal people can rest easily in the hospital and add a neck brace/sitting upright to that, I assure you that I got nothing more than one or two hours of sleep there.   I also got confusing directions before being discharged…the surgeon talked with me the next morning and said everything looked great and I really didn’t need to wear the neck brace if I didn’t want to, however the RN handling my discharge said to ABSOLUTELY NOT TAKE IT OFF UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES until my follow up at the surgeon’s office in 2 weeks.   I compromised, I didn’t wear it as long as I was sitting quietly in a chair watching t.v. at home…but I wore it if I were up and moving around and I did wear it to bed.   I honestly couldn’t wear it to eat—I had to remove the padding early on and replace it, because I spilled so much food and drink on it.  :p   The hardest part has been being away from work for so long, just about 3 weeks now.

But after my first week at home, I ventured out a couple times (with the neck brace on, for safety)—visited my co-workers at the Library and tried to enjoy some of the 70-degree weather we had.   After two weeks and I saw the surgeon again—they removed the bandages, told me to go without bandages but don’t pick at the glue/stitches.   (I’ve been putting a light gauze on at night, because I don’t want something stupid to happen while sleeping.)   They also said I could completely go without the neck brace entirely and gave me return to work papers (trying to get ahold of someone to process the paperwork with my employers seems to be the harder part).   I’m still hoping I can return to work by the 23rd of this month.   I have a follow up again on April 9th, where they’ll also start me onto PT.   It will be a heck of a scar once the glue and stitches fall out, that I can tell you!  XD

One thing I’ve been thinking is how to change or improve my art.  I was looking through old art and stuff and my hardest mentality to break is to “not draw exactly like the reference”—that’s more prominent when I draw fanart, I don’t break from what the official art of characters look like.  But it also comes into play when I draw characters I’ve received from others (via adopts or trades)…and even on my own characters.   I stick to the “initial reference” that I received from someone or my first drawing/ref of an original character.   I’m so stuck on the “draw like the design”, I think I may have become stagnant on actual growth in my artwork.   I started to try and grow a bit with my adopts via “The Sealed World” universe I made for them…but I still draw from the original designs of characters, merely changing their clothes.   What can I do about this?   I thought about practices of drawing characters without looking at a reference—or like look at a ref for 5 minutes and then draw without it.   Maybe even work on body shapes that aren’t a particular character and find out how I just draw characters.  Maybe figuring out how I draw figures might help me develop more originality?

I’ve been gathering my “refs” of characters—whether the adopts I have or my own OCs—and making a booklet of characters.   And from there I might start making lists of what I want to do with this “personal growth project”.  In the meantime, I’ve still been taking things slow with my recovery…watching a lot of DVDs and reading stuff.  Doing some small tidying/organizing projects here and there.   I haven’t had chance to actually draw, because I’ve been more concerned at how I hunch my shoulders when I do that and that MAY NOT be good for my neck right now.   But I’ve thought about drawing a whole lot, even while I can’t do it.   XD