Taking Liberties

Whenever I find myself slouched in the corner of a bar talking beery bollocks about art with my fellow sufferers, one theme seems to rear its ugly head more than others:
The delicate balance between following your creative dreams without becoming a starving waif.

It's a ticklish problem.

The challenge is keeping yourself afloat without completely selling out and making coasters with pictures of sad kittens on them.
Maintaining the spark of what makes you creative in the first place whilst simultaneously being commercial enough to indulge in extravagances like bread and socks takes ingenuity and cunning.

On that note it's probably time to introduce a collection of images, some of which will be familiar to regular readers of this blog:

http://www.gettinguptostuff.com

This is the stuff that happens when you stop worrying and just do the things that you care about, need to do or simply feel like having a bash at,  and it's the antidote to all the work that has to be done to pay the bills.
I haven't put my name to it simply because I don't want it to become just another commercial endeavour that requires publicity, explanation and the endless pursuit of egotistical promotion.
The stories are more important than the author and for once it's not about trying to be recognised.

In the meantime, the ever present need to replace some dangerously ancient socks has seen me using those same skills to keep the piggy bank from dropping a dress size.

The lovelies at the Thekla (special mention to Chloe) needed a DJ booth makeover and something large and eye-catching for the annual New Year's bunfight, and these were the result;

So maybe that's the answer.
You keep going, doing the best you can to buy the time to do what really matters to you and if you're really lucky, sometimes the two things go hand in hand.

And it saves you having to get a proper job.