My nephew had it right in finding ways of adjusting to the change of seasons. When he could no longer use his orange plastic sled for zooming down the backyard slopes he’d pull it out for the summer months and use it as his own personal wading pool.
I, on the other hand, do my fair share of whining about the colder temperatures and onset of snow covered roads. Perhaps I need to pull out my orange plastic sled more often in snowy weather. (And yes I still have one.) Or maybe I could just pull out more pictures of my nephew as an adorable toddler and do pastel and chalk sketches of him, as I’ve done here.
My drawing board was taped up with another piece I was working on so I looked to my easel. I often jostle back and forth from working at the flat surface of my desk and the tilted surface of my easel. I’m more comfortable working at my desk when I’m working on a drawing as it’s easier to swivel my work around for working on finer details without getting my hand into the finished parts.
There are pros and cons of drawing on a flat or tilted surface. Comfort’s a big thing for me, as I may be at the work for quite a few hours. But sometimes when I’m working in the comfort of my flat surface desk I can get slight distortions in my drawing from viewing it at an unusual angle. The article I’ve linked gives a good explanation of this.
When working at my easel I can get lots of free flowing strokes which can bring life to a painting. But occasionally I find myself leaning in towards my work to attend to finer details which can cause me to have a crick in the neck. It does however get me off my rear end some times.
I also don’t necessarily care for working at my easel when I’m doing pastel or chalk work as the dust from the chalks can drift down and cling to the lower part of the paper which allows me to accidentally rub some of that into the picture where I don’t want it.
I’ve found what works best for me is to work with my piece taped to a drawing board which I can either tilt at an angel when needed or lay flat when I’m filling in large areas.
That way I can save having to deal with cricked necks only for the times when I’ve tried to dive into my shallow orange sled wading pool.