Slight Setback

The fourth painting in the 'Seven Gates' series is very detailed. Imagine painting the image below - albeit in a slightly twisted manner - and you'll get the idea of just how much detail. 

I worked on it for the whole of last week and by Friday night my hand was killing me. All of the joints, especially in my thumb, were feeling very sore and I was struggling to make a fist. The problem has been having my hand in a cramped position all week, performing minute movements.

After a weekend of rest my hand was feeling a lot better but when I tried to paint on Monday morning the pain came back straight away. I think it may need more rest.  

So now I'm planning the fifth painting, making my free association lists, designing a creature and going out taking reference photos. And so far it's been the trickiest one to plan, but that's a story for another time. All of this means that the next two paintings will probably be finished at the same time in about two months. It's frustrating because I was only a month off finishing the fourth although it's probably best that I protect my hand.

For anyone else suffering with a similar complaint I was signposted to a couple of great links by the blog Nature's My Friend. I'll post them here too for ease:

http://ergocise.com/wrists.html 

 
This morning, I came up with a crafty plan to alleviate my hand issue. I thought I would paint in some of the slightly larger areas of the figures with my left hand. Turns out I'm not ambidextrous and they ended up looking more like this:

Next time I'll have a look at how limitations help with creativity. See you then.

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