Anuden

Baby steps and small wins, in the end we forget that progress is a constant steady steps we take every day. Sometimes it is good to stop and take in the path you have walked to get here, especially when it feels like you are not getting anywhere. So its always great to open your mail to find this kind of surprises.

https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/5656690/your-best-shot

Click the link to enter the digital exhibition. The main hall had the to 20 winner selected by the Guru. Find this picture on one of the walls to see the other top winner.

To find mine you have to enter my name Helena Marais to see it.

To get selected for this honor you have to reach all star status in a challenge with over 3000 votes to be in the running. This picture has also been the Guru Pick in the Green challenge.

Soon it will be available as a NFT! Watch this space

Well this year are truly a rather interesting year this far, with all that is happening in the world and in my life. I moved from Cape Town to Centurion, Gauteng, to be closer to my family. It was crucially important for me to get here before March, and everything worked out in that manner to get me home.

I did not know why there was such a desperate force in me to move NOW, as I wanted to move end of April, but there was this incredible force in me demanding "GO HOME NOW". Eventually I gave in and all my arrangements came together in a matter of days, which is something that normally don't happen in my life.

Needless to say I got home not long before this Coronavirus went viral, and now I am in lockdown for 11 days already with my family. Soooo now the urgency of the matter makes more sense for if I was to stay where I was, it would have been bad. I guess I do have someone looking out for me after all, at some point I wondered if they were still there. Clearly they are.

Being back home, my brother formatted my computer after we tried to recover my lost data, which include photos and my art, to no avail. In the end I lost an enormous amount of Photos over 6000 of the last 3,5 years. The plus point is I have a lot of them on different platforms, so I have been able to recover a great number of them. I still need to recover those on Instagram. It's not all I lost but its something.

He then converted my computer from Windows to Linux Manjaro. Which I was kinda not happy with, but he said it was time for a new challenge and I do agree... I was very low after losing my life's work, my business and being broke yet again (It seems I like restarting my life as this is now the 7th time) So much stuff hit me in 2019, that I was not even angry or distressed when I found my life's work gone, I just looked at my computer and started laughing... "Well played universe, well played... you made your point!"

Using Linux is actually not bad, as I learn to navigate it, I learn to navigate myself as well, which is great really. As I have been in hibernation (spiritually) far to long now, but it was very necessary, to do the changes in self that was needed. In a way the process of learning my computer is helping me relearn me and how I work. Interesting paradigm really.

The new Gimp are truly amazing, from the one I started with such a long time ago. It was then that my brother introduced me to Photoshop CS5, this I spend years working on and developing. I thought it will be hard going back to Gimp, but it's not, the new Gimp are so much like photoshop its pretty cool. The tools are in different locations and it took me a day or two to find them all. The photo editing part I am unsure off and I will get deeper into that part as time goes on. I have created a number of works of late with Gimp learning the functionality and I feel more myself lately. The excitement to actually do art again are getting stronger. I also started making art for a game, that is also something I want to dabble in.

I also got back into my writing, and I am working on my novel again that has laid dormant for way to many years now. It's time to create more children books too.

My brother then started pushing me to try 3D art again, I was angry at him immediately as I it irritated me greatly, because in the past I did try to learn 3DS Max and Maya, with tutorials, but ended up being frustrated to no end. As all of those tutorials gave me grey hair! All the people making the tutorials left out portions, then as you model nothing works and then you realise they are using plugins that they didn't tell you about in the start nor in the descriptions. 2 months of fighting with those two programs and I gave it up for my own sanity.

He installed Blender for me, and I was miffed for sure... he also put some tutorials on my computer. Sooo I got bored, and started watching the tutorials and decided I want to make the Treasure chest in blender. I was not very positive about the whole endeavour... Opening blender it didn't look the same as the tutorial guys and I growled about it, so my brother set blender up in the correct way. Clearly I don't want to do it, and me not wanting to do something always start with a growling match and then a sitting down with arms crossed saying make me. So the process took a few days, because being the Capricorn, you don't make me do what I don't want to do. LOL

Few days later I grumblingly sat down and tried again, and it went ok, with me cussing and growling all the time, following the tutorial. (Which is my process) My family interrupting me the entire time, irritating me to the point where I Growled at them, to "LEAVE ME ALONE DAMMIT" Then feeling sorry for themselves, after I asked them to NOT bother me. They KNOW me, they KNOW to leave me alone when I am struggling with something and myself. They know better... But I guess me being away from home so long they forgot. They remember now.

The process got better till I had to extrude the lid of the chest, then it kept flaking out on me, it would not do it the same way as the tutorial said and kept messing up the chest. Eventually I just saved and closed it, as I was getting furious. In the end the anger was towards myself, feeling like a failure, the past year was shrouded in such failures that I truly was having trouble with it. I got up and made myself some tea, came back and opened Minetest (its exactly like minecraft, but opensource) and I just started building world. I wanted to end the day in a positive way, one where I feel in control, and achieved something cool. Even if it was just in a game. It ended up calming me down and allowed me to work stuff out in my head, which is how I process stuff. It took me 3 days of wanting to get back into blender and fighting myself. Then this morning I got up and I knew exactly what was wrong, so I got back on blender and fixed the lid.

Blender are definitely better than 3DS Max and Maya for me, as I find it logical (my logic) to work with and understanding how it works. It definitely is getting me interested in 3D again and it is giving me confidence in keeping at it. If something interest me deep enough I can get very persistent and dogmatic. Its how I learned Photoshop, through doing 1000's of tutorials over many years. To grow you need persistence, and practice, practice and more practice... but there is a deeper sense of inner creativity that has to be strong to change your art from good to great.

The first part of this year has been hard, but not as hard as 2019, that year almost broke me, and I guess it was necessary for that year to get me out of hibernation, and to put my wings back on and to make me wake the dragon once again. I won't say the year will get less hard, but as long as I have my art, I have hope that it will all be ok in the end.

Here is stage 1 of the chest its far from done, but it's the base. Now the metal work is needed and the skin. I will post as I go along.

This is a Capricorn year, and being a Capricorn myself, with my sun sign in Capricorn and my moon sign in Capricorn... I was told that this was my year... At which I of course scuffed.. as I mean really, every year I think this is going to be my year, it just ends in a repeat of the old... But I will say I did not expect the bang this year has started with...

Just before the new year, I was listlessly opening my mails to just give it a gander, and lo and behold I almost choked on my water reading the mail that was in my inbox. I was informed that another picture will be part of an Exhibition is Slavinia. I was like well that is awesome start to the year.. And let it slip by, as the rest of my life is a bit of a bloody mess after the wonderful 2019 I had. Being fired, and being homeless and jobless, and all that nonsense.

So this would be the Photo - Tripple Vision. Now this picture has a history it was also part of an Exhibition in the Louvre in Paris as part of the See.Me exhibition.

Then on my birthday the 3rd of January I had a nice excursion planned with photos and such and checked mails before I left and Lo and behold!!! Another mail... I was like a sweet birthday present. Another exhibition on the 17th of January in Melbourne, on my fathers birthday, so cool.

This is the picture Too Close its one of my most favourite photos of a wild elephant... and no I did not have to zoom....

Upon coming home from my Bday not very long after another mail arrived in my inbox.

This time in barcelona, Spain..

This was the picture... Dragon Eye moon

The year started with so many blessings and of course, there has to be a disaster just to make it balance. I decided to format my C drive in order for my Windows 10 that was messing up my system to be reinstalled. So the very clever IT Idiot... somehow formatted my D drive as well. And guesses what is on my D drive. All my art and photos... Yes I do have backups but my last year backups are now somehow missing, so I lost everything after 2015... Lucky I have them stashed all over on the net, so I can at least recover some. And now I have to get my drive to send in for recovery, which I can't afford right now.

Well so we will deal with all that in due time and get my life on the right track again... time will tell what the rest of the year brings.

I am hoping for an Exhibition of my work, not in digital form but in a real gallery on the walls.

And I hope I can actually get to attend it this time. The year truly started with a bang but maybe that is the momentum needed to propell me forward into good things.