Sunday 16th February

The mimosa blooms are giving me so much life at the moment, and the first few daffodils are showing their faces. Yellow is such a joyful colour and as February hints at spring these bright colours are exactly what my mind need at the moment.

To be honest I haven’t been feeling great, I didn’t send a Sundaze Papers last week because I was feeling the frazzling impact of stress and anxiety. One thing I’ve learnt is that these tend to show up when I’m not sitting with my emotions, and the best way I’ve found to really process an emotion is to draw it. It feels a bit vulnerable to share these drawings but I really love them as a way to understand how I’m feeling in a way that I sometimes can’t quite access with words. I thought it might also be helpful to share incase you might find this practice helpful for when you’re struggling to capture your emotions too, because it seems the only way to the other side is through them.

I drew myself as a little sunflower seed, because when I feel swamped by these feelings it feels like its squashing my potential, and we are all seeds bursting with the possibility of growing into a beautiful sunflower.

In the autumn I was also using this process and capturing the good feelings too :)

Our black cat Joǎo can be a bit of a terror and likes to KAPOW the other cats, so we always say he’s saying “pow pow pow”, and he inspired this page in my sketchbook (and it may also be how I was feeling life was treating me at the time too, it was very cathartic to draw!)

And then Iwan challenged me to create some one line drawings of Joǎo too. If you used to follow my drawings 5 or 6 yeas ago I went through a big phase of one line drawings.

I hope you’re all doing well and the light is starting to crack through the clouds. If you need a little boost of joy I thought I’d share this little daffodil drawing that’s in my shop, that has a much needed joyful pop of yellow, and is, coincidentally, a one line drawing.

So much love,

Carissa

xx