Weekly Drawing: Week 15

Out on the Savannah, protecting the young.

This drawing was inspired by crawling around the lounge room with 8 month old daughter.

I started the weekly drawing goal to give myself a regular deadline to sketch funny ideas down and make sure all my time didn't go on housework. I was motivated to work out a way to draw and create regularly without it taking too much time away from my young family. I wanted to do art but I also wanted to be a great parent and husband. I've been reading a book about other parents who have grappled with this challenge: The divided heart: Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power.

 Here's a quote that really spoke to me. It's from Rachel's interview with children's authors and illustrators Martine Murray and Sally Rippin. Sally quotes a fellow parent and author, Chester Eagle:

"It sounds impossible but, after all, even the most hard-pressed parent usually manages to brush teeth, iron the odd garment, make a bed or remember to buy tomatoes, so why not write as well? I mean it. Why not?

 I'm fairly savage on this matter. If one wants to, one will. If one isn't organised enough to do it, one isn't a writer, only a would-be writer and the world's full of them. Build your life around what must be done and let other things go, or drift, but write the book... (...)

I sound ruthless about this because I am. If it matters, it'll get done. If it doesn't get done, it didn't matter enough."

...at which point Rachel reflects:

"At the time I found myself arcing up at these words. Perhaps I wasn't yet ready for the cold, hard reality of what lay ahead of me. I was looking for the secret to maintaining a creative life - but not one that involved waking in the middle of the night (more than I already had to) or letting the house go to pot...."