Something amazing happened<em>I managed to find a way to silence my imposter syndrome gremlin…</em>
For the first time in over three years I actually started to feel like myself this week. As an HSP (highly sensitive person) I feel things extremely deeply and the immense grief of losing both my woofles and the lingering burnout from my past life in tech had left me feeling very lost. I guess I’d reached the limit of what I could deal with emotionally and for the last year I have withdrawn from the world, needing to restore my own equilibrium. I really feel like life has passed me by this year, like I haven’t been conscious enough to register anything that’s happened and it’s a very odd feeling.
I’ve tried really hard to keep going on this project, but my self esteem and confidence was shattered into so many pieces that it’s been really hard. I’d grown so used to having my work scrutinised and criticised to the nth degree that I’d become a black belt in procrastination and was afraid to start anything for fear of it being deemed not good enough.
So this week I decided to embrace ‘play’. By this I mean I made a very concerted and conscious effort not to judge anything I did and just play and experiment in a child-like way and something amazing happened… my very loud, very annoying and persistent imposter syndrome gremlin shut up and got back in his cage and for the first time in what feels like decades I got into the flow state - it was glorious!
I’m genuinely really excited to share what I’ve built this week with you, do you know why? I’m really happy and proud of what I’ve done and I honestly don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. You have no idea how freeing that feels. I have had so much fun designing and evolving the portico. I’ve researched architecture, I’ve played with shapes and colours and I’ve really enjoyed the process. Just to clarify, I obviously would like for people to enjoy my work, what I mean is I’ve got to a point where I don’t need or crave validation with this project anymore because I’m enjoying creating it and I’m happy with it, and that’s enough.
Ta dah!
Regency inspired Portico addition plus new improved windows
Phoenix arched window
One of the biggest changes from the sketch I did last week was to make the pillars look more organic and soft as opposed to the more classical pillars of the regency period. I just think it works so much better with the fairytale nature of the castle and the setting of a magical nature sanctuary. One of my main inspirations for my pillar design was my harp - Florence - who is a Salvi Diana and has beautiful carving on her pillar. (I called her Florence because she made me think of the city in Italy that ignited the renaissance and all the beautiful architecture and art that resulted.)
I’m delighted with my phoenix arched window, it’s such a huge improvement over the very corporate looking gold emblem hung on the wall that I had previously. It’s so much softer and I think a lot more classy.
One of my big learnings this week has been the importance of texture and depth for taking renders and lighting effects to the next level. I realised this while modelling the door panels and the pillar details, the more ‘facets’ I created with my detailing the better everything looked. Now obviously there is a limit to this both in terms of time and computing power but I’m pretty happy with the balance I’ve got at the moment on these elements.
In light of this I’ve also reworked all the windows on the main building to have a lot more detail and I plan to put some more regency inspired features on the portico wall next week.
Speaking (typing?!) of next week, my plan is to try my best to maintain this new play ethos and start work on version two of the orangeries. I’m going to rework the windows and add some stone work detailing referencing the portico pillars.
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Thank you for reading, have a lovely weekend world,
