Eupatorus gracilicornis and why I’m not drawing much lately

It’s been awhile since my last blog post.

The last time I posted a WIP picture of a small cat drawing and well, I haven’t finished it yet. I worked a little bit more on it but I wasn’t enjoying it so much. Sometimes, when  drawing, you just can’t shake the feeling that something is not right or as you wanted it. This was one of the reasons I didn’t finished it yet.

So, to take my mind off the cat, I did another illustration, this time  with watercolours and watercolour pencils.

 

This is a painting of an Eupatorus gracilicornis. It was painted with my limited set of Winsor & Newton watercolours, and Derwent watercolour pencils (the link is for the “new” pencils, the old 18 set that I have don’t exist any more).

But after this I didn’t paint anything else for one big reason. The reason why I’m still not drawing is because of my hands. I have dyshidrotic eczema (also known as pompholyx). Basically my hands (especially my right hand) are full of tiny blisters. I’m not in pain but still, this is very uncomfortable and very VERY itchy. Sometimes I just wish I could scratch my skin off and put a new one, but scratching is one of the worse things I can do, so I just have to endure it and try not to go crazy. As you can imagine this also gave me some sleepless nights, which makes my brain work really slowly.

Now I’m making some changes to my diet and I’m applying creams and oils all the time (I’m avoiding steroids creams) and fortunately things are getting better. I’m not that itchy any more and the blisters are slowly disappearing. The problem is that my hands are still full of creams or oils all the time. If I made an illustration now, its description would have to be something like “painted with coloured pencils and hand lotions”.

I hope I can paint something soon. I will keep you updated 🙂

In case you haven’t seen it, I posted a WIP picture of the Eupatorus gracilicornis on facebook.