What creative shenanigans have you been up to at home today?
I was given a choice of twitter poetry bot accounts to steal a word or phrase from, in order to launch a poem of my own. I plucked a line from Silvia Plath (probably predictably?).
The scald scar of water
On this witchâs cheekâŠ
Only saved from dissolution
By the earthly salt
Reminding, with its taste,
That vinegar, too, must not proceed
Where honey should prevail.
Overtures of patriarchy, parable and pop culture, anyone?!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Today was the FINAL day of Inktober! I canât believe how fast it has gone by!
The prompt was âripeâ, and I didnât feel like drawing a piece of fruit, so I put my Monk-watching side of my brain to good use and drew this instead:
I didnât have the bottles in the dumpster to begin with, I was just going to draw the gentleman as if he was dead, but Eldest came in as I was working out which pose etc I would draw him in, and he seemed tickled by the fact âthe teenagerâ was nearly naked, but looked very sad when I suggested âthe teenagerâ was dead as an explanation for him being where he was! (To be honest, with Eldest saying it was only a boy in his teens, I was disturbed by the idea, too!!) Eldest looked right at me with his big blue eyes and said âwhy canât he just be drunk?!â so I hastily complied and Eldest went back to giggling about the underwearâŠ
It was then that I drew in all the other random items of clothing. I only have a pic of the scene before and after I drew the trousers behind the guy, so youâll just have to take my word for the rest đ
I used the medium PITT fineliner on the dumpster, and outlined the rest in the XS pen (thickening up the lines a bit where needed). I used watercolour on the bags of rubbish and most of the rest of the interior elements, but went with gel pens for the jacket (with shirt inside it) and the boxers are shiny when they catch the light!
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I outlined the âstink trailsâ coming off the dumpster in green gel pen, and then for the finishing touches I rummaged through the boysâ playroom felt tips and scribbled some brown down the front of the receptacle, as well as a bit of beigey pen down the side, to suggest mucky overspill. Ta-da!!
As it is also Halloween today, our boys went out guising with Hubby. There was no creative input needed from me here, the boys had asked for bought costumes because they love keeping them to mix n match and create characters around for the next few years đ
Eldest did insist on his hair being covered by a woolly hat before he put his mask on, however, as he mused that scary skeletons would not be blondeâŠ
So thatâs my first Inktober done and dusted! I really didnât think that I would ever participate in one, but it has been a pleasure to use the Faber-Castell PITT pensall month, and I definitely feel I have much more confidence in my ability to convey what is in my head by using a mish mash of reference images and/or situations I have encountered in real life or through my reading and popular culture (because I donât have any cyclops neighbours that I know of).
I knew that I was beginning to properly understand the basic concepts of crochet when I started being able to design my own flourishes to patterns, and I now can see progress in how I think about line work, composition, perspective and shading in my drawing.
I will definitely continue to keep up my daily drawing and painting and try to build on this new confidence. I will start posting less now that Inktober is at an end, but I think maybe twice a week might suit me, I am going to look at how that will fit in for me and go from there in terms of whether I decide to blog my works in progress on set days or make it a much more fluid content schedule.
I do have a lot of crochet to catch up on and some arty projects I want to get much further into that have been shelved due to Inktober work, so I should have some interesting things to share with you over the next wee whileâŠ
As ever, take care of yourselves, and feel free to fill my comments section with links to your art and crafty obsessions. I would LOVE to see them!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Itâs the penultimate day of Inktober 2019 and the prompt was âcatchâ.
I held my left hand up in a loose fist, as if I had just made a grab at something, and drew what I saw as accurately as possible.Â
I had already decided that I was going to put a fairy inside the fist, so I set to work outlining her (all in pencil at first).
I also pencilled in a jar which I fancied she would be placed into any second now! The lid annoyed me for a bit, our kids pointing out it look more like a coaster than a part of the jarâŠ
I inked everything while thinking about it, then redrew the lid and it doesnât look that bad now, if you ask me đ
Coloured pencils were used lightly on the big hand: peach for the skin and pink for the nails. Watercolour brought out the jar, the fairyâs clothes, wings and shoes. I went back over the fairyâs face with the light pink pencil again, just to make her look a little flushed from anger/squeezing. I also coloured in her neck with the pencil because Iâd missed it with the paint the first time around!
And my piece was finished! Only one more piece to draw, and thatâs me inked my way through a whole month! Yaaay!
Have you been following along with Inktober? As ever, leave me a link to your work in the comments and Iâll âcatchâ you tomorrow!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
The prompt for Day 29 of Inktober was âinjuredâ, and Youngest knew exactly what I should concentrate my efforts on:
âI think you should draw a cyclops and a man stabbing him in the bum with a sword, mummy. That would hurt himâŠâ
My first thought was to draw the Cyclops in profile, maybe even have him and his aggressor only in silhouette, but that posed problems when it came to depicting that the brute only had one eye, and also meant I had to be pretty accurate in my shaping so people would definitely think of the larger dark figure as a cyclopsâŠ
With these problems whirling in my brain, then, I chose to begin with a 2B pencil. This proved to be a good decision as I quickly lost track of how many little (and large!) details I changed while working out the cyclopsâ pose. It made drawing the human fighter seem very straight forward in comparison!
So I thrashed out the details in pencil and got to the inking eventually.
I did most of the piece in watercolour after that, but the sword and the inflicted wound seemed like a good place to employ my gel pens again – although you canât see it in the pic, the sword is nice and shiny! I also went around the cyclops in a slightly thicker pen than before, to press home the idea of him being large and solid đ
The more I look at the human man, the more I wonder why he is in a dressy shirt in a cyclopsâ domain and why he would want to pick a fight where the cyclops appears to have all the advantage?! That club the brute is holding doesnât look all that friendlyâŠ!
Have you been drawing today? Let me know by posting me a link to your work in the comments đ
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
The prompt was ârideâ and I thought about a rollercoaster, and then I thought maybe I would challenge myself to draw a motorbike or a fancy carâŠbut a look at Pixabay for inspiration made me want to draw a hot air balloon in the end. I was so taken by the idea that I just grabbed the âFâ PITT pen and got straight into it đ
I struggle with my perspective drawing, but I am working on that; I do think the basket angles are just about there, and the person could fit into it (of course at the current moment they are very stretched out!)
I used watercolour for the sky, balloon spots, basket and fire, but went with pencil for the balloon background colour and the person as they would have been tricky to paint without messing it all up. All in all, it was about an hourâs work (divided up by me eating some supper, recording my âwinsâ for the day and some âwoohoo the kids are sleepingâ internet pottering) so a relatively quick piece to do, though I managed to procrastinate on getting it started for a whole day đ
Did you draw anything today? As always, pop a wee link to your work in the comments and Iâll come and admire your creation(s)!
Only 3 prompts of Inktober 2019 left! Wow!
I’m getting so used to outlining things now that I absentmindedly started going round the edges of the paint strokes on the sheet I’ve been testingcolours on.
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
As I mentioned on the 25th, I was invited over to my parentsâ house yesterday, so didnât get a chance to do any prompt-drawings for Inktober. Instead, I have combined day 26 and 27, which were âdarkâ and âcoatâ.
I started off with a drawing in pencil, but I was so involved with what I wasdoing, I forgot to take a picture and instead went straight to the inking part:
Hubby had seen me sketching out the coat and heard me wondering out loud how I was going to get an evil element into the picture â and he pointed out that the pockets already looked a little spooky.Â
So I ran with the idea and added the scarf for horns etc. The kids liked how it all turned out, too đ
Yesterday I was doing a different kind of creative activity, as my mum was teaching me how to make some fabric items on my sewing machine that has been hiding in my craft cupboard for the last 11 years đ it was a really lovely change!Â
My parents come at least two Fridays a month around 4pm and hang out with our boys and me for 90 minutes or so, and a few weeks ago Mum took my sewing machine back to her house in order to familiarise herself with it and make a plan for what sheâd teach me.Â
The back of my cushion
I made a pin cushion, a paper hankie holder, a cushion cover – and a small Christmas tree ornament that I need to stuff and finish off. It was a lot of fun, and mighty strange to see my mum without my kids vying for our attention or either of us having to go and do something else!
I arrived at my mumâs around 11am, and Dad took me home around 9pm.  We had meals and snacks together. It really was lovely to see them both for an extended period of time đ like rolling back the years to 4 year old Monty, when the three of us lived in a flat in Edinburgh before my brother was born đ
If only I looked as good in flouncy dresses and long hair these daysâŠ
It was pretty late last night before the kids went to bed and I got to sit down and do a quick draw-and-paint session, so I only managed this crazy butterfly, that fulfilled no prompts whatsoever, but raised a wee smile as I coloured it.
Have you been creating anything this weekend? Halloween costumes or scary decorations? Let me know in the comments đ
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Day 25âs prompt was âtastyâ, and I immediately thought about this food:
(sorry the picâs a bit blurry)
I inked over the pencil lines as usual, once I was satisfied with the sesame seed placement, etc đ
Then it was the turn of the watercolours. I had to mix up a dark enough brown for the burgers, and also faff about to get a pleasing yellow for the cheese. As a finishing touch I re-outlined a few of the salad leaves and the onions â and I was done!
What would you have drawn for âtastyâ? Does thinking about it make you hungry?!
I am visiting my parents this weekend and will probably combine my Inktober Day 26 and 27, so Iâll be back soon with whatever I come up withâŠ!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
We are on Day 24 of Inktober, and the buzz word is âdizzyâ.
I knew that I wanted the conventional âstars around the headâ to be present (though I draw pretty pitiful ones) but once I had drawn a head and the appropriate dashes etc there seemed to be quite a bit of empty paper left. It then hit me that the woman could be dizzy from drink and so the bottle was put inâŠthen I remembered about the concept of pink elephants, so got a reference from here and had a bash:
I soon decided I needed another elephant for the other side, the first elephant should be on her shoulder, and maybe there should be some music in the last free corner:
I inked the elephants and the womanâs features in the XS PITT pen, and went up a size or two for outlining the bottle and other aspects of the piece, again going for the âbring forwardâ or ârecedeâ effect I wanted:
After that, I mixed up a light pinky-grey on my palette and coloured the elephants. I also gave the lady lovely red hair, ringed with (soon to be) mid-yellow stars:
The ladyâs skin and the background are done in pencil, but the rest is watercolour. I went for a green background to stick to the ‘grog-gy’ feeling I was trying to get across. I gave the elephants another quick going over with the fineliner, and that was that!
I swithered with keeping the elephants the misty way they looked when I had painted over them, for the more authenic “hallucination” style…still not sure I should have re-inked them, but hey-ho.
Have you been drawing recently? Hop into the comments and let me seeeee đ
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
The Inktober prompt for Day 23 was âancientâ, so Youngest came up with the idea of me drawing some weaponry!
I flicked through google and Pixabay, and soon settled upon the idea of drawing a centaur with a bow (after rejecting the castle idea) because not only is my star sign Sagittarius, Iâm still reading about all things Greek-goddy every evening!
I wanted to make it a young centaur, however, so I mashed together a pic of a pony and another of a girlfrom Pixabay:
I thought the background looked a bit bare so, as you can see, I drew some trees and DID squeeze in a castle. As an afterthought, I looked up an alphabet of runesand put some on the tree on the far right. It says âhuntâ in the symbols đ
It was ‘just’ a case of inking and watercolour-ing from there:
I also did some painting yesterday and today around the topic of âancientâ â a turret scene and a collection of weapons:
Did you draw anything today? Feel free to gift me a link to your work in the comments đ
I shall leave you with a close-up of my centaur’s wee friendly face. I donât feel she would harm usâŠ?
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
October 21st was Hubbyâs birthday, and I spent the first two hours of my morning watching Percy Jackson and the Sea Of Monsters on Prime with the kids, in order to let Hubby have a lie-in (and then time to visit the dump with some rubbish from our garage very grown up birthday activity, eh?!) and possibly a wander by himself.
With the plethora of Rugby on telly this week, and our boys eager to have him out with them or playing FIFA 20 or Rugby 18 on the X-box – not to mention there being a real match locally that the three of them went to watch on Sunday – Hubby has been the boys’ parent of choice a lot this holiday!
My kid-wrangling then moved on to the boys and me having a lengthy discussion about what happens in a film vs what happens in the book it came from, and why the changes may have come about  (always fun, but this film does diverge a LOT from what I have been reading to them over the last week, so I am thinking there may be elements of future books in thereâŠ?). Then it was decreed that I should read the first few chapters of the third book Percy Jackson and the Titanâs Curse so that easily took us up to Hubby almost being back home again!
Hubby ordered in pizza for a late lunch, much to the kidsâ delight, followed by Hubby opening his presents. Our boys are very sweet and had made lovely sturdy cards at the beginning of their holiday, so they sat down beside their dad one at a time and told him why they had drawn the pictures on the front, and who was who etc.
Eldest: “This is us fishing!”
Youngest: “This is us at the table, Dad, and you’re showing us the map”
Youngest: “You caught a trout!”
About two hours later, we were telling our recent news to Hubbyâs parents on Skype đ then there was dinner prep, candle-blowing and cake-scoffingâŠsoon followed by a bit of maths revision, rough n tumble, uniform-gathering, school shoe polishing, gym- and book bag packing, showering, suppering, chatting and huggingâŠ
So anyway, I did get to fit a bit of drawing in around the edges of all that, but I didnât push myself too hard because I knew it was going to be a full and woolly sort of day.Â
Day 21âsInktoberprompt was âtreasureâ and Day 22âs is âghostâ. I have watched enough T.V featuring the likes of Scooby Doo & Mystery Inc to know that the two prompts complement each other quite a bit.
I managed to get the pencilling done and couple of parts of the drawing inked before midnight yesterday:
Then Hubby went to bed and I decided I would just do a little more as I wasnât tired yetâŠ
Thatâs when the real fun started: I realised my gel pens had the PERFECT green for ectoplasm.
Oh, oh – and sported glittery gem/metallic colours in their ranks!
I took the âfully-inkedâ photo at forty-six minutes past midnight this morning, and this next picture at 1:27am!!
Time does fly when youâre happily absorbed! Â I hope you can see a bit of the wonderful shininess through the screen đ I outlined the coins and a few other bits in the luminous yellow colour, but I figured they were enchanted in some way and the swords, watch and second necklace would look a bit naff with that colour around them, so could just be bling-y in their own right. *Shrugs*
Artistic licence and all that.
By 1.41am this morning I had: shaded the cave walls with my grey coloured pencil, pressed harder for the rocks and blended brown and grey for the dirty floor. I had also decided that it would be silly to stop now, so the chest was beginning to be tackled. Which only took me seven minutes more, according to the time stamps đ
So there we have it: Days 21 and 22 marked off, and two daysâ worth of drawing and inking accomplished! I think I finally fell asleep around 3am đ
I did not forget my painting promise, by the way. I had fun dipping into my âPayneâs Greyâ and âUltramarineâ watercolour pans last night and playing with the amount of water I used in order to create this quick ocean scene:
Hubby loves the sea, so it seemed the obvious thing to paint in the last hour of his birthday.
Have you any inky or painty pieces to share with me? Pop you links in the comments, please đ
Day 23âs prompt is now in my sights đ
(Just as soon as I recover from having much less sleep than I planned for this first day of the kids getting up early for school after October break!)
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
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