Friday is my day: Lineanongrata

This Friday we will meet Julia from lineanongrata.etsy.com And the city is Berlin. We are invited to follow one of her creative days. Enjoy your journey!

Princess

lineanongrata

Hello, my name is Julia Freund. I'm a Berlin based illustrator and if you are looking for me in the internet, you will see that my virtual home is called Lineanongrata.
My day starts at 8 am. Well, at least it should. Sometimes I just turn off the alarm, turn around and go to sleep again. I guess it's one of the advantages (or disadvantages, depends on how you look at it) of living alone and working as a freelance illustrator.
Usually I have a hard time waking up, so I spend the first disoriented hour of my day bumbling around the apartment drinking tea, cleaning the kitchen, washing or ironing the fabric I want to use in my next quilt or doing some other manual task.
At around nine I usually pick up my pencils for the first time of the day. I have found that it's best for me to do something precise and non-experimental first thing in the morning. It'll usually be some kind of study or still life. Those are illustrations that ask for a lot concentration and focus, which helps me settle into my work.
After an hour or two of painstaking still life work, I move on to more experimental and interesting work. In the past I have tried to start with this kind of illustration first thing in the morning, but I have a tendency to feel discouraged when an experiment doesn't turn out well, and to have that kind of feeling early in the morning didn't ever help me get through the day in high spirits.
Noon usually sees me eating in front of the Computer. My mother will have a heart attact when she sees this, but I give myself an hour or so, working through facebook news, twitter updates, looking at favorite blogs and going wherever my fancy takes me on the Internet.
Around one I'll get back to it. Illustrating some more, scanning whatever I want to put in the shop or on the blog, or maybe, if it was a good morning, on my portfolio website. If one of you have more efficient system to flatten crinkly illustration onto the scanner than piling heavy books on it, I would love to know. As it is, I have a stack of photo books right beside the scanner because all my illustrations seem to turn out crinkly.
Music and audio books are my steady companions. I have tried 'a history of the middle ages' but it makes me go to sleep. Instead, I listen to the most gruesome thrillers all day long. They keep me awake, especially during such boring work as scanning, picture editing or, the worst, washing the dishes.
At around four pm I'm ready to go crazy if I don't see another human being so this is the time when I'll take the trip to the post office to mail orders, or to the grocery store. Even I don't have nothing particular to do outside, this is still a moment where I need to do something else than work. From experience I know that I wouldn't be productive anyway, so a walk through Berlin is always a good idea.

This city is one of the most interesting places in the world for me. It's a mixture of art, poverty, inspiration, common good sense and the typical berlin snotty-ness that makes me love the place.

Usually I get back from my walk at around five or six in the evening. Sometimes I'm able to work some more, this is also a good time for blogging or answering email.
At around sever or eight I'll go to either kickboxing practice, or I'll go for a run. It's important for me to go out and do sports, on some days it's only real contact I have with other human beings. It also keeps me sane to exercise, both physically and mentally.
I know: all this fancy fitness food looks ridiculous, but I'm heavily hypoglycemic (too much insulin and constant low blood sugar), so i need to pay very close attention to what and how much I eat, and these energy bars work well for me.
On days when I go boxing I'll be back around midnight, when I go for a run a bit earlier, but on both occasions I'm now very very tired and ready for a shower and bed.

Sometimes I wake up at three or four, switch off the lamp and close the book I have fallen asleep over.

...Thank you all for staying with me throughout this day.