Quarantine : a breath of fresh air

Bonjour! I’ve been missing a few weeks in this blog, for a few reasons. The first one being that I have been overly drowned under work. The second one is that I have been a little overwhelmed by this corona situation and the quarantine here in France. It’s time to take a breath of fresh air.

Quarantine, taking a breath of fresh air designer desk artist studio isabelle arne

The quarantine is here to last and I saw that it was hard to keep to the house more than 7 days in a row. I tried, it was terrible for my mental health. Even if I really keep busy with personal art client work, I am missing the fresh air.

What have I been doing lately?

During the last month I have been focusing on my client projets. These days I am working on two books. They are two follow up stories from book I have already illustrated. The first one is the following story of Ronnie the Helicopter. I showed this book to you recently in this blog article and now I’m finishing up the illustrations. And at the same time I am working on Shanita Allen‘s next book. Do you remember the article about “Sleep tiny dreamer“? Well it’s the following book to this one. I’m still gathering a lot of materials on this book since Shanita agreed to me talking n this blog about our collaboration. New articles about children book making should come up in the next weeks or so.

I have also been actively working on my comic Radiant, we are now at the 21th episode. Not all available to read yet out of the Patreon but soon it will be! I have two to three episodes early on my patreon compared to the publications on Webtoon.

comic radiant isabelle Arne bd bande dessinée

If you’ve missed a few here is my comic in English and here is my comic in French.

Not to mention character design class I give at ECV two days a week. All that work has been more and more overwhelming this past month with th worrisome environment we are in. I’ve been quite panicky at times and quite depressed too. All is usually calmed down by taking a breath of fresh air. But what to do when you cannot?

I need a breath of fresh air!

So last week after a pretty severe case of burn out and I can’t do it anymore. You know when your head is in such a fog that you just don’t want anything more than watch reality shows and roll ?

I hate this feeling, I am at a point in my life were I want to be more proactive and more positive in my actions. Even it’s a little, just opening my sketchbook and not dwell too much on my state of mind would be best. Because even if it’s quite easy for me, I’ve noticed that I cannot let myself go to self pity.

It’s not agreeable for me, who feels sadder and sadder as the day passes, but also for the people around me that have to take care of the lump of a girl that I am becoming…

So a few days ago, I’ve decided to try to take things differently. It’s not easy to be positive. But I believe I can convince myself to be in a better mood. I can also help keep my mood up by some little efforts.

Take care of yourself

taking a breath of fresh air.

Since taking a breath of fresh air is hard in these time, I’m trying a few things to keep my mood and morals !

  • First of all I’ve accepted to get help from Mefisheye for my comic Radiant. He is doing all the color now and I’m taking care of the drawing only. What a breather ! It takes a lot of work out of my shoulders.
  • Next Ive decided to take more time in my sketchbook and let myself explore, not work on any project or have a purpose when drawing and just draw, or paint whatever comes to my mind in that instant.
  • I’ve also been indulging myself in a lot more cooking that usual, I love to make the weekends more specials since we can’t go on pic niques or explore the nearby towns. We have been lucky to find yeast, it’s a hard to find item lately, and I tried to make Bbang bread and it was just delicious. It’s one of my favorite bun recipe and with all the sun we have it’s just perfect to heat the dought.
  • One thing that I have not yet implemented is reading, I do read a lot usually but I’ve been reading less and less since the begining of the quarantine. I’ve picked up a new book in French called “Fleur de Dragon” by Jerôme Noirez, I’m pretty sure I’ll read it in no time!
  • The last thing I want to work more on is actually taking breaks outside, even tiny even very close from home, in France we are allowed 1 hour walks or jogging every day if we stay into a small radius of our home. I’ve been really avoiding it in the spirit of keeping safe but I guess twice a week would be good at least to keep the head sane and the vitamine D!

What do you do to keep sane in these hard times ? What is your breath of fresh air?

taking a breath of fresh air
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2 thoughts on “Quarantine : a breath of fresh air

  1. Rester enfermé chez soi sans sortir du tout ne me parait pas bon du tout. Déjà c’est très dangereux pour le cœur qui est un muscle qui doit s’entretenir au rythme minimum de 30min de marche par jour. Si on ne respecte pas cette sortie autorisée d’1h par jour, les hôpitaux seront bientôt pris d’assaut à cause d’autre maladies que le covid19 ! ^^ C’est aussi très important pour le moral, on le sait tous, c’est chimique, on a besoin de lumière. Il faut aussi s’aérer les poumons pour ne pas s’attraper d’autre virus. Bref, si nous restons vraiment enfermés sans sorti pendant 2 mois, les caisses de la sécu ne s’en remettrons jamais et nous non plus haha ! Si tu as la possibilité de te promener sur des chemins assez larges pour ne pas frôler d’autres promeneurs alors n’hésite pas, aucun risque pour personne. Mais je te comprends, même si je me sens assez privilégiée dans cette situation, j’ai aussi des coups de blues, c’est normal. Dessiner, travailler sur un projet avec une autre personne, se redonner le temps de lire… c’est la bonne attitude pour garder le moral et retrouver ce qui est essentiel dans notre vie ! En tous cas ça fait plaisir de voir tes dessins et c’est génial que Mefisheye fasse la couleur de Radiant ! Je vais attaquer la lecture de ta BD d’ailleurs ^^

    1. Merci pour ton commentaire ! Oui en effet en ville c’est plus compliqué de ne croiser personne mais on y arrive mieux, écrire le post m’a aussi permis de nous motiver un peu plus a faire des sorties plus régulières et de la corde a sauter en intérieur. On va essayer de sauvegarder les caisses de la sécu au maximum et avoir un coeur solide 😀 ! J’espère que la BD te plaira !

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