Evi-Illustrated!

Art Blog of Illustrator Emma Victoria I am a graduate Illustrator from Wolverhampton University, England. I like to draw and paint using both traditional and digital media, as well as experimenting with Lino printing and papercraft!https://paperscribblesillustration.wordpress.com/

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I’ve been painting my Labyrinth models this weekend, which seems timely given that it’s been a year since Bowie’s tragic death. I love these :)

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Been keeping myself busy today - in between writing essays and reading journal articles I’ve been playing around with my watercolours. In the background i’ve been watching the Universe Explore livestream on Youtube, and it kind of inspired these few paintings.

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I'm ill with the flu at the moment (yay me!) and spent the morning in bed watching The Labyrinth. My boyfriend bought me the new Labyrinth board game for Christmas as it's beautiful, but has also got me on a bit of a Labyrinth kick. Whilst watching the film today I began sketching Hoggle. I love Hoggle - so sweet and misguided. I also need to produce some pastel images for work to demonstrate to my students how to use them, so this was a good excuse. Not quite finished yet because the flu is exhausting me.

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HELP REQUIRED!

For one of my assignments at University, i’m required to form a mentoring relationship with someone, record our mentoring conversations and then analyse my performance as a mentor. The problem is, i’m finding it very difficult to find anyone to mentor, and i’ve not got a lot of time left to do so. 

If anyone would like mentoring in the following areas, please get in touch and we can sort something out:

PGCE Student

New teacher

Art Teacher

Art/Graphic Design

Adult Education/College

Ideally you need to be in the UK as I only have knowledge of the UK-based Education system, but for art/graphic design mentoring, you can be based anywhere.

Thank you!!

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Reblogging on my main blog, just in case!

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I’ve spent the day trying to turn my boyfriend into a Zombicide character as an additional 30th Birthday present for next Friday. It’s not a proper character, but more a commemoration of him levelling up to 30, and since Zombicide is his favourite game, I thought this would be an awesome way to celebrate.

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Lesson Learnt (maybe)

I’m at home for a few days (family home) and my mom made a cheese and potato pie, but didn’t have enough of my lacto-free cheese to make me a separate one. I told her it’s ok, i’m at home so if it causes problems later i’m fine. I’ve accidentally eaten little bits of stuff with lactose in over the last few months and i’ve been ok (i’ve been in a bit of pain, but manageable).  I’M NOT FINE. I’m dying. I can’t even substitute a little bit of cheese now without feeling like my insides are being ripped apart. I’ve learnt that I either stick with my facto-free substitutes, or I suffer the consequences, big time. This is the worst i’ve felt in a long, long time.

Lets see how long i remember this pain for before I get a craving for non-lactofree ice cream or cheese... :( 

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Ahhh I posted this to my actual blog and not my Studyblr!! To visit my studyblr please go here.

Today i’m (hoping) to finish off my assignment for Uni. The deadline was extended until the 16th, but i’m away at a wedding this weekend, so I don’t want to be swamped with work at the last minute. The assignment on the writing of Stephen Brookfield is done, I just need to proof it and keep my fingers crossed that i’ve understood what he was on about.  If for whatever reason I don’t have my Visual Stress glasses on me, I change the page i’m working on in Word to a blue/purple shade, the same as my glasses. This helps me to read and write better on my laptop. 

Also, I need to get this done so I can plan a fab lesson on portraiture for my Drawing and Painting class next Monday :D

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Heavy day of studying and work today with my Uni work for my Masters degree now kicking off with a reading of Stephen Brookfield and a blog entry on the definition of ‘Critical Reflection’. I’ve also got two lessons to plan and resource, a stack of marking to do and Assessment for Learning records to write up. 

For anyone wondering - yes my glasses are blue/purple. I suffer from Visual Stress or Meares-Irelens syndrome which means I find it difficult to read things on white paper. It’s a bit like dyslexia in a sense, but long story short, until I was diagnosed with this, I spent 4 months with daily migraines because of Uni work. 

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Check out my new Studyblr, figured it might be a good thing to do since this year i’m a new teacher, i’m returning to Uni to do my Masters and i’m completing my QTLS portfolio.

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I graduated! (Again) I’m now officially a qualified Art Lecturer :D

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On the flip side...

I’m struggling in my relationship because I think my boyfriend is suffering from a severe bout of depression. I’m pretty well trained to spot the signs of depression since I’ve struggled with it for nearly ten years now, so when I began to work out what was wrong with him I thought it’d be ok because he could get help and we could work through it together.

The problem is, he doesn’t want to get help. He said he doesn’t believe in doctors or medication because they mess with your brain and they change who you are. He’s admitted that he doesn’t know who he is anymore, he’s using distractions. He’s being taken advantage of by people he’s only known a few weeks and it’s threatening the balance in our relationship.

We sit, we talk, he cries, I hug him until he starts to feel a little bit better. I reassure him, I talk him through what’s going on in a logical way. When we are together, he’s generally ok. When we are separated (it’s a distance relationship) that’s when he begins to switch off from me, distract himself with other things and push me away. On Tuesdays he attends a D&D group. At first he wanted me to come with him, but I couldn’t because I worked Tuesdays. Now I’m available, he doesn’t want me to go to it because it’s his and he wants to keep it that way. However, he invited a friend of ours to go, and she’s been going for some months now. There is another girl there who has attached herself to him. Both jumped on him a few weeks ago when he thought we were about to break up. One told him that she’s always there for him, the other spoke to him at length about our relationship (despite not knowing me at all), offering advice and a shoulder to cry on and then asked him to be her dance partner at a dance competition next year. A bit trivial I know, but I’m not comfortable with my partner dancing the Tango with some woman who jumped on him thinking he’d be single soon.

I barely hear from him on Tuesdays when he’s at D&D, and then i barely hear from him the day after too. It’s upsetting. He’s not eating properly, often skipping breakfast and dinner, only eating lunch because he’s at work. He’s not looking after himself at all.

I don’t know what to do. He’s pushing me away sometimes but pulling others closer, and while I trust him, I don’t trust them.  When you’re having a cuddle in bed with your partner, and one of these girls starts messaging him (after midnight) wanting to talk and then getting pissy because he’s in bed with me, what should I think? He wonders why I was upset when he chose to keep texting this girl back while we were supposed to be cuddling and falling asleep together. I feel like such a jealous bitch, but these girls don’t make it easy.

I don’t know how to help him with his depression, and I don’t know how to stop it affecting mine.

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First Teaching Job

A year ago I was preparing to take the first steps into the world of teaching. Well, actually I was on holiday in Greece, but I was still preparing to start my PGCE as soon as I returned. I was nervous but excited about the thought of returning to education and making progress on my lifelong ambition to be a teacher.

Fast forward a year and I’m preparing to begin my first teaching job. If I had found a job teaching within a College, I’d be feeling much more prepared I think, as I’d have a mentor to guide me, and I’d have class lists and schemes of work to work from, and I’d have a good idea as to what I was supposed to be teaching. Instead I’ve got a job working an hour away from my home at an Adult Education Centre, teaching Art to adults with Learning Disabilities one day a week, and then maybe teaching Introduction to Drawing and Painting and Watercolour 1.5 days a week if I manage to get enough people enrolled onto the course. I have no mentor, my induction day is the day before I start teaching, and as far as the LD art classes go, I have total free reign over what I teach them.

I have no idea where to start. I feel like I’ve been submerged in the deep end of a murky swimming pool with little support or direction. I have less than a week to prepare at least 4-6 weeks worth of classes, and I do not know where to start.

I should be thrilled and over the moon that I have a job teaching art so soon after completing my PGCE, especially since it’s such a hard field to break into, but I don’t. I applied for hundreds of teaching jobs and barely got past the application stage for most of them. Only one invited me for an interview – the job I’ve now got – and I somehow feel like I’ve taken it out of obligation.

I’m not excited about starting this job, I’m terrified. I can’t tell anyone that because it makes me seem ungrateful or whiny, and I’m not, I just don’t feel the slightest bit prepared.

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Soo...

I’m literally the worst at keeping up a regular habit - writing in my blog, remembering to moisturise my face every day because it’s become very dry for some reason, and exercise. 

TL;DR - So.... The main point of this post. I’ve decided that I want to take up running again. At first I didn’t think i’d be able to because of my asthma, but a bit of research has shown me that as long as I manage it correctly, warm up and down properly and i’m careful about how hard I work, it’s possible for me to run again. I’m not sure how yet, but i’ll ease myself into it. I’ll combine it with some gentle yoga so that i’m not punishing my body, but rather building my strength steadily. Does anyone have any tips or advice on how I can start running again or specifically begin running with asthma?

Exercise has always been a bugbear of mine ever since I was 11. I used to be a running champion at school - I hated sports and doing physical education, but i loved running. I was good at it and it made me feel good. Not that i should have worried about it at that age, but it kept my weight down and kept me healthy. Then on one sports day at school I was running the Long Distance competition. I was leading by some way and I was doing fine. Then my chest started to hurt - it started to tighten and then i suddenly found it hard to breathe. I pushed on; I was metres away from the finish line, everyone was cheering and I could see my mom on the sideline waving her hands frantically. She wasn’t cheering, she was telling me to stop. I collapsed on the track and everything became a blur. I woke up to see my mom and a couple of teachers stood around me. My mom was crying and my teachers looked worried. Someone said doctors. I saw a yellow sticker. My mom took me to the doctors straight from the sports day and I was diagnosed with exercise/activity induced asthma. As an eleven year old kid, this scared me. My mom had asthma, she was really poorly with it. She had to take weird medication - did that mean that i’d have to? I ended up on a blue acuhaler and a brown preventer. I was told that I would have to avoid lots of exercise because it could make me really, really poorly. I remember the yellow sticker - it was on my uniform saying ‘You participated.’ I went from first to absolute last in a matter of seconds and then I’d been given a sticker to remind me ( for those of you who haven’t read my blog before, i’m a nice person, but I try to be the best at everything I do, and I don’t handle failure well). That’s the last time I ran for pleasure. The next time I ran I was in secondary/high school. It was another sports day, but ours were compulsory participation. I couldn’t do long jump or high jump - i was too short. I couldn’t do any of the throwing competitions - I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t do hurdles because I couldn’t jump high enough and all that was left was sprinting or relay racing. I opted for relay because it meant that I wouldn’t have to run the whole track. I still ended up gasping for breath and lying on the floor feeling like I was dying. After that I hated sport and exercise with a passion. Students made fun of me for not being able to breathe so for a lot of my sports lessons i’d either have a note excusing me, or i’d pretend to have a really bad asthma attack so that I could sit out. It was better than actually having an attack or being jeered at by idiot students. Fast forward 11 years and i’m approaching the end of my PGCE course (i’ll soon qualify as a teacher!), i’m 28 in September, my best friend is getting married in October and i’m her maid of honour and i’m overweight. Not massively, but enough for me to not like it/be concerned. I’ve got a million and one health problems, mostly digestive, but the headaches and migraines I had for about 4 weeks last year have come back this year and i’m just entering week 8 of suffering from them daily. Something has to change.

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Today is a very special Mother's Day here in my household, because for a brief moment at the start of this year, we didn't think we'd have our mum. She has survived a heart attack, heart failure, a severe chest infection, pneumonia and kidney failure - all at the same time - so I think it's fair to say that my mum is Wonder Woman and Super Woman all rolled into one.

I love and appreciate my mum more than words can say, and i'd be lost without her. I'm so proud of the progress she's making and it gives Mother's Day a new meaning for me. It's not just one of those random days we make an effort for anymore, it's made me realise how lucky we are to be able to celebrate this with her. I love you Mum. Happy Mother's Day xxxxx

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selfie?

Gonna have to elaborate a little more there anon!

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So...

In the next four weeks I’m having surgery, leaving my job, flying for the first time, starting my PGCE and turning 27.

I am honestly not freaking out. AT ALL.

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This is actually so, so true..At least my man-child also likes to play with Lego as well :D