A new drawing and a new old drawing

A quick drawing this week for a magazine article. In one section the writer mentions #2 pencils and wonders what the European equivalent is. I spotted the glass on the editor's desk and took a quick photo of it then added the different pencils later. I loved the beautiful orangey red and found just the thing in my Polychromos pencils called Vermilion. I'm getting more familiar with the colour pencils now and I tend to use the Faber Castell Polychromos over the Cretacolor and Faber Castell Albrecht Durer. I also like that they are not water soluble like the other two as using those feels like tempting fate - not that I have ever got water on a drawing but there is always a first time!

Speaking of fate, it does seem to be playing funny tricks on me at the moment. Nothing I've done relating to my art in the last few weeks has gone smoothly. Scanning shops having technical problems then giving me the wrong scans, my printer breaking down, e-mails disappearing when I press the send button after agonising over wording- even on one day when I had to get to an office that day, they told me they were closing early and my feet were so blistered from an old comfy pair of sandals the day before it nearly killed me to get there! It's been bizarre but it's no use, it will have to try harder, I'm feeling too positive to let it get me down! I don't even mind if it all comes to nothing, I'm learning from the experience and I know I can use that in the future and do better.




















I was asked for this drawing for a 'health and well-being' issue and it may possibly go on the cover. Unfortunately it was too pale and no amount of enhancing was improving it so I set about making the skin tones warmer and more saturated and hopefully it has improved it.




















I couldn't find a reference photo with the same angle (surprisingly) but also it was a little difficult because of the lighting in the life class. In nearly all the sessions the light comes from two angles - cool from the window and warm from a light which I'm not particularly fond of. So I couldn't really remember how the light played on the muscles and skin of her back and may have lost a little definition in places. Since it was going to be re-worked anyway, I changed out that nasty pink colour that was clashing with her skin tones for a more complimentary purple.

I'm off to London next week for a short visit so I'm not sure if I'll have time to draw and blog before I go. But we did extend the trip by a few days when Paul discovered a motor show was on, so maybe I'll have time for drawing when I'm there!

Reasons to be cheerful - 1, 2,...400!

Not that it is something to celebrate, but this is my 400th blog post. I noticed the numbers just after I published my last one and I was quite surprised I had written so many. Still, it provides me with a good excuse to say a big thank you to everyone who stops by and especially those that take time to comment. There are millions of blogs out there and we all have lives to lead, so I appreciate it very much!

When I first set up my blog, I wondered how on earth I'd manage to keep it going - at that time I had only a few (maybe 15 or so) drawings to my name. All portraits and all laboured over for weeks and sometimes months. (OK, maybe I wasn't so productive pre-computers!) So it was a big step to set up a sketch blog relying solely on posting what I was currently drawing. (That was the intention but Kuwait was a mine of inspiration for taking photos too and I quickly got carried away!) Seeing that I had written nearly 400 blog posts was a surprise but that is nothing to the amazement I continually feel when I see how many drawings I've produced in that time. Three years ago, I truly wouldn't have believed I was capable of producing so many or of tackling some of the subjects I did.

Although things have been quiet on the blog recently, this is by far the best year, artistically, for me. I said I was going to concentrate on 'putting my work out there' and I have been - and doing things completely out of character for me! I'm going to toot my own horn and count my chickens before they are hatched now, because I've been talking shows to various people, and I don't want to say too much but my blog has been noticed for the writing and photos too so I hope in the future to see those published locally! My long term plan is going more slowly, with some minor frustrations, but it's something I'm going to plug away at. So far, just tentatively putting myself out there has brought some wonderful and unexpected results so I'm a very happy bunny at the moment! In fact, just starting a blog was out of character for me - maybe there is a lesson to be learned from that?!

Cooling off

Feet up, not a care in the world? Well, yes as a matter of fact! It's my birthday today, so I think I'm entitled to some guilt-free self indulgence today! Actually, summer has at last arrived in Geneva after weeks and weeks of miserable rain and now it's so hot, it's hard to work up the energy to do anything other than cool off in the pool.















Yesterday morning I looked out and saw a hedgehog had fallen in the pool again! I don't think it was trying to cool off though...
















Fortunately it didn't look as exhausted as the first two that fell in a couple of years ago, so maybe it hadn't had to swim for too long. I fished it out with a net and put it under the hedge. After a few minutes it toodled off.

I've taken a break from drawing and blogging as they were becoming a bit of chore, something of an obligation. I felt it coming for quite a while - spending too long reading other people's opinions, even when they are informative and well meaning, can leave little room for your own thoughts to develop naturally. I'm sure I was more disciplined and more productive before computers came along and I'd like to get some of that back.

This is a quote from Carol Lloyd's book, Creating a Life Worth Living, from the writer Mary Gaitskill, on asked to give advice to beginners (but I think is necessary to think about often) -

"Basically not to listen too much to what other people say about your work, or make yourself too open to what other people's ideas are. There's a certain kind of purity of perception that everybody has, but I think it gets occluded in many people's lives very early, because we get so many ideas about what things are supposed to be like, what we're supposed to think and feel, or what things are. We often don't see things just through our own eyes. And that's the most important thing, to be able to see things through your own eyes and be able to say what you see without worrying about what other people have to say about it. I think first you have to have that base of knowing what you think and feel. Later you can learn from taking in other people's ideas. But first the base has to be there. That sounds less complicated than it is, though, because it's very hard to do that, more so than you think."

Even when you have that base, the constant, relentless bombardment of news, opinions and information can knock you off it, so something pro-active has to be done. So, like a recovering alcholic, I'm taking it one day at a time!