The picture’s from last year’s big interrailing trip. My packing will be a bit different this week. This week I am taking my youngest daughter on a resort holiday. An all-inclusive resort holiday to the Canary Islands.
This is not the sort of trip I think of myself as taking, if that makes sense. I am a traveller and I travel to observe and witness other countries and other cultures. To sit in cafes and drink coffees or beers while listening to the lilt of the local language and watching and noticing the differences in body language. To sit on long train journeys and see how the architecture of ordinary houses changes from country to country. To clock up ridiculous numbers of steps wandering out beautiful, small winding streets. To stare at and photograph amazing street art.
Not to sit by a pool and grab food from a buffet and be handed free cava after free cava (yes, I do know it’s not technically free, because I paid for the all-inclusive thing).
All that said, though, I did go on an all-inclusive resort holiday once, paid for by my in-laws and to celebrate a big anniversary of theirs. And… ? Despite having worried I would be incredibly bored and sad to not see ordinary life and ordinary people… I absolutely loved it. It was literally the only time I can remember ever fully and totally relaxing. The food was actually really nice and there was a very good variety for vegetarians. The swim-up bar was awesome and the frozen pina coladas delicious. Not having to think about food was so incredibly freeing. The cooking itself I tend to love, but it’s the thinking about it that is emotionally draining - trying to come up with something that will be at once healthy, delicious, not overly expensive and… the biggest issue of all - be something everyone in the family will eat. So, having that pressure completely taken away was wonderful. I also fully took time off work. I did no work. At all. I sat by the pool and read. I sat facing the beach and read. I took luxurious little dips in the pool and chatted with family about all sorts of things. I literally had nothing to worry about. Oh, yes, and I also didn’t have to worry about how much money I was spending on eating out or public transport and so on. And I had some really nice chats (in Spanish) with some of the staff, so I did get to see a bit of ordinary people, too.
My daughter loved that holiday (the other one really, really didn’t) and has been wanting to try another resort holiday since. Of course, there was a small matter of a global pandemic in between, so it’s taken a while. And, if I’m honest, I’ve also not pushed hard to make it happen. But… looking at holidays for August to take the whole family and it was getting more complicated, and more expensive and there were too many wishes to try to accommodate, it occurred to me that I might be able to do something a bit cheaper in the Easter holidays, so I started looking at resort holidays, and just for the two of us, because (a) that’s easier and (b) it’s cheaper and (c) eldest daughter has exams coming up and revision to do and wouldn’t touch a resort holiday with a barge pole and (d) husband would probably loathe the sort of cheaper holiday I’m going for because of all the other people.
So, long and the short of that is the two of us are off tomorrow to Tenerife to stay in a big 3-star hotel in what looks like it should be an appartement rather than just a room and we will be going the all-inclusive route. Not because I think it will be anywhere is lovely food as we had in Mexico (I have a feeling it will fairly basic and we not have amazing vegetarian choices, but there should at least be salads and bread and probably pizza and chips). Not because I’m expecting to sit on a sun lounger being brought pina coladas and glasses of cava while I ensconce myself in a big juicy novel. But because I will be working while we’re there, and this way I don’t have to cook or think about what or where we are going to eat. We will both get enough sustenance.
And I will be able to get up early and do a few hours work before she wakes up (teenage hours are generally a bit different to middle-aged woman hours) and then chill out or go exploring with her during the day and then maybe squeeze another hour or so in the evening after dinner, while she’s watching stuff on her laptop. Or maybe we’ll check out the entertainment in the evening. Maybe we’ll get a bus to another town, or take a walk along the coast to one of the bigger resorts. Maybe we’ll get to take a few dips in the ocean. Maybe we’ll play some table tennis or pool (I can’t actually remember if they have things like that, but if they do). Or maybe we’ll just do a lot of nothing and enjoy that.
The important thing is that there will be no pressure and we’ll be somewhere different (and warm!) and I can do this because I will be working and I will be earning more than what I am paying for it over the week, rather than paying for it double by losing a week’s worth of work. (Note to self: Get yourself out of that mindset. You are allowed to take a full proper break and do absolutely no work sometimes!)
I may share some photos and updates in Notes, or in my Dailyish Ponderings (the part that’s not supposed to email or push out posts to anyone, so you would have to come and look). Or I might not. No promises. No pressure.
What I’ve been drawing this week
I find I am happiest when I have a sketch or a bunch of sketches ready to colour, because then I can just pick up my iPad of a morning, or an evening (or whenever, but those are the two most common times for me to do so when I’m in a phase where the main day-to-day work is publishing and not illustration) and just dig in, without having to think about what to draw.
And, you may know this about me already, but I really, really love drawing rooms or bits of rooms. So I made a sketch of a reading chair with some other bits around it and have been colouring it this week.
I decided to (a) do this in my ‘normal’ (old?) flat vector style (in Adobe Fresco - pretty much always in Adobe Fresco these days), but (b) to also try for a limited palette. And I’d been drawing and painting a fair bit in browns, often with pink thrown in, so that’s the palette I went for.
I loved being able to just pick it up and draw the next bit, and seeing it gradually come together over the week. And I also really appreciated having that to balance out yet another quite busy (non-creative publishing) work phase.
Then I had the finished piece.
And… it felt too flat! I think it might be the limited palette contributing to that, because when I throw all my colours at a piece, that brings its own kind of texture, I guess. First I tried altering the palette a bit (using layer overlay tricks).
I really quite liked this one - interesting, because it’s far more muted than my usual colours, and it has a lot of purple in, and I don’t think of myself as really being into purple. (Not that I hate it, but that it’s not a big colour for me. Can you tell what my biggest colour is, by the way? It’s not hard.)
But then I decided that what it needed was texture. So I have started (not yet finished) adding texture.
Hopefully I’ll finish adding the texture during the week away and maybe I’ll draw another few sketches to colour, too. And I think they might have colour and texture! I did have an idea about properly planning the story to put into some room pictures - I always leave bits around to give a glimpse into the character of the person or people you can’t see, but was thinking to add more of that and sketch with more intention. So I may try that. (Or I may do the thing that I do when I am super busy and low on time and just draw a bunch of stylised flowers! That’s OK, too.)