Slough of despond

Drawing 411

Drawing 412

Drawing 413

Drawing 414

Drawing 415

Long time, no blog.

Unemployment sucks. I hit a really low patch and couldn't get motivated to do more than work at the two temporary part-time jobs I managed to find (one of which has now ended), and look for work. Looking for employment is like a full time job in itself: scanning the job sites/newspapers/cold calling (which is the worst of the lot). I did have one interview for a job I would have loved (again part-time, but I'll take what I can get), but didn't get it. Sending off applications for jobs that don't inspire me but which I could do (I'll work at just about anything), apparently into a black hole or a trans-dimensional portal, because very little gets acknowledged or responded to in any way. It's as if I'm talking to myself, or writing to myself. It's a little eerie and very discouraging.

Not much art happening, bar drawing-a-day (lots to update the blog with, there! Six or so weeks of drawing...), but I am thinking about stuff again. Painting. Drawings other than the little daily ones.

Just to top off my despond, my car broke down last week. All the coolant escaped and the poor beast almost died of thirst. She now has a new water pump and a secondhand radiator and is back on the road. The Bloke and I trawled the wreckers for the radiator. I quite like visiting the wrecker, it's a whole other world I didn't know existed until I met him. Dirty hulks lie rusting in huge yards, picked over and scavenged for parts, like a pack of predators have savaged them. Cars that have been in catastrophic crashes, cars that have just reached the end of their useful lives, cars that don't seem to have had much wrong with them on the surface. All washed up in dusty, greasy, rusty, festering, mouldering rows.

Actually, they're quite organised; each car is numbered and the remaining parts available entered in a computer database, which prints out a map of where in the yard each vehicle reposes. I was impressed! I'm not much use when it comes to the assessing of viable parts, and even less in tool wielding to remove said parts, but I took charge of navigation and equipment toting. Photography is forbidden (not sure why) but some car graveyard images would be interesting to have. I picked up a part-logo: FA. Falcon, perhaps. I may make it into a brooch. And I scavenged some of those little bulbs from rear brake lights - they look like they'd make
good glow-worms with the addition of some paperclay and wire (and maybe some glow-in-the-dark paint). Or wreck-worms.