Difficulties in drawing

 

There are quite a few hurdles I need to overcome in order to draw a pastel.

Hand to eye coordination is mostly tricky, difgicult or not posdible.

My hands and fingers are always numb to varying degrees.

They slso burn with pain and throb frequently.

My eyes are blurry and it is hard to focus.

Several times a day or all day I can be paralysed partially or totally, near paralysed, or too weak to move.

My mind is blanked by each paralysis and I cannot necessarily see or understand or receive and edpress information. And then there is the head pain, switching sides, left, right, top, back of head, neck, limbs all throbbing in unison.

It is quite miraculous that I can ever  draw at all. Then there are literally brief moments in a month when I can see a bit more clearly, I might hold a pastel and look at a picture and try to draw it. I have to be very quick. Any sound or movement or surprise can knock me back into blankness and paralysis once more and the rest of the day is stolen from me yet again.

It is a frustration then that my eyes never really work properly, my fingers never feel normal and I struggle with fine detail. I like to smudge with my fingers. This is easiest for me though very messy. The eyes then are the most important to get right but also the hardest for me to control the pastels to do the fine detail. If I cannot get the eyes right the picture will not look right no matter how much the rest might look okay.

This is always my challenge, how to draw a picture that reflects the dog that I see and bring out some special look or feeling that makes you want to love the dog and comfort or cuddle it? With wonky eyes, it is a particular challenge to get the dog right enough to satisfy my base line. It has to look like not just a dog, but the dog. This is my aim, not helped by my poor vision and numb hands. Yet sometimes, just sometimes, I get it right enough and that feels so good!