A fickle friend

Sometimes creativity sucks; it is such a fickle friend. I have periods of intense creativity, where I could do anything, be anything, with ideas and energy and passion overflowing from me. I feel the border between the mundane world and the fantasy world start to shiver and crack, I glimpse through into the startingly beautiful lands of myth and legend. And I am so close, I can almost touch it... I can capture it on canvas, in paint or colouring pencils, paper and varnish...  This is when I am most me, most authentically me.
And then there are periods where it is enough of a challenge to feed myself, my cats, find clean clothes and have enough loo roll in the house (certainly the sign of someone who is in control of their life, running out of loo roll is the ultimate adult fail); and I hunker down under piles of half finished projects, abandoned by my fickle friend. Sometimes she is gone for months, sometimes weeks. Sometimes I can prompt her to come back, sometimes not.  It is like walking in the valleys after you've glimpsed the heights of the mountains.
The last time she went, she was gone for a month. I decided that I would fight it. I would draw a tiny part of a picture every day on a sheet of A3 paper, just twenty minutes a day before I went to sleep

This is the picture with every white bit filled in:

 
 My cousin's daughter, Emily, requested the band (Wings of course) and the balloons, and in return she got her own ice cream shop. I think I would live in the teapot by the flowers if I had the choice. My fickle friend has gone again, but I am starting to feel the need to be creative again, that slight ache that heralds a new spring.