Sanctuary of Lost Shells (finished) & Covid-19 lockdown

So, I've finally finished my Hollowknight inspired painting...and I'm really happy with it. 

I'm aware that a lot of what I love about it isn't so much my own ideas: the colour scheme and the bug shell based windows. But I'm also really happy with the overall layout, the Art Nouveau border and very much the way she interacts and stands in front of that border. 

I'm mostly likely going to just keep this one for myself, though my mum has a lot of my paintings (birthday presents over the years) I myself don't really. 

I also never really managed to fix the damage to the white space around the painting from the masking fluid, it ended up with a lot of white gouache trying to cover it up which doesn't look great...I could maybe hide it with mounting board. 

~*~

Now on more general life rant: This year’s been tough, I'm sure it has been for everybody, but I am so so lucky to live in the countryside and be able to go for walks. 

For me the difficulty has been less the actual virus and lockdown but for five months my mum got my grandpa out of the city to live with us, Glasgow's Cordia homecare services had collapsed.

It was a weird 5 months, it felt like time had just stood still and life had just...stopped. Everything had just focused down onto my grandpa and it was suffocating. 

I've never really had many rules as a kid and I never really needed them. But now meals had to be at set times, be in my bedroom by 11pm, sneak up and down the stairs at night because if they creaked my grandpa would think someone was outside. He'd harass the cat and she'd attack him back, and then he'd forget and do it again. 

The most difficult part was that due to my grandpa's dementia either me or my mum had to sit with him at all times, in the living room with the news on repeat, otherwise five minutes later he'd go searching for us (either up our rather dangerous staircase or off searching the countryside in a random direction.) We both are trying to run businesses, my mum's also got an online college course, and we were both either constantly interrupted or stuck in a room with the tv on full blast (my tinnitus is back now.)

The one time he went for a walk by himself he decided to climb a cliff in dress shoes to look at bog cotton, fell, ripped his hand open and nearly severed the tendon for his pinkie. There's something so horrible about seeing a wound and realising people are just made out of meat...

I know I might seem rather heartless, but the thing is my mum never got on well with my grandpa anyway and after five months I understand why she left home as soon as she could. We had to conform to his standards with no thanks.

 

Anyway.... Haven't done much painting this year. I hope to get more done now that he's back in Glasgow.