Between Joy and Pain

Since my first craft show a few years back, I had an idea for a card and every year I put it on my long list of cards that I want to make and never got around to it. This year I just had to do it. For the card I needed a drawing or painting of a tea cup and so I sat down yesterday and made it. I have not been painting for a very long time, Painter (the software) has been sitting still shrinkwrapped for 3 or 4 years and it was quite expensive, just as my underused Wacom tablet. So since I did not want to go through installing new software, I worked in Photoshop instead, which I am more familiar with anyway, having painted in Photoshop for 16 years now.

OMG! I forgot how much joy I get out of it. This is what I did as an exchange student in grad school, my best year ever. I would show up at 7 am at the computer art lab and stay until they closed it at 11 pm. I definitely need to do this more.

My joy was dampened though by the fact that I realized in complete panic and horror, that the 160 Gig harddrive I lost last weekend does not only contain all the files from my previous macs, but also files I need for the show in a week, so very urgently needed files. If something is inevitable and just a fact, I try not to get too upset about it, since that will not change anything. I am upset though, but it won't deter me from just moving on (and get a RAID). So whenever I would remember another few files lost, I would go look at this picture and try to take a deep breath. What a roller coaster ride.

So now I will take my pot of German autumnal apple tea and plate of freshly picked apples, hop into the studio and turn it into the card that was so long in the hypothetical making.