Thursday 26 October 2017

A slight change of direction

It's been a while since I've posted here, as while we've been as busy as ever I just never seem to get time to sit still at a computer, other than when I'm working. I've been doing very brief posts over on Tumblr from time to time, but not here. I guess it might be time to think about using a mobile app to update this blog.

Amongst the things I haven't been talking about (due to lack of posts) is this year's main crafty activity for me has been to practice my drawing. Like most children (or at least M) I drew all the time, as often as I could get hold of paper and pencils. Drawing as a thing petered out in my teens, although it saw a brief resurgence in my early 20s as I dabbled with watercolours. After that, being an adult took over and drawing mostly stopped.

M of course loves drawing, so I'd occasionally draw for her and at some point last year I started drawing for me. Last Christmas rolled around and I decided that this year, I would try to improve my drawing skills by practising a lot. Which I have done, mostly to the detriment of knitting time.

Rolling forward to now, 10 months after that decision and despite my preferred medium being pencil, Dave persuaded me to try #Inktober, which is an internet challenge to draw a picture a day in ink for every day in October. I don't use ink, I have a long standing fear of it as I hate the permanence, the fact I can't erase and have to go with the first mark I lay down, so I was hesitant but M thought it was a fantastic idea and in the end the whole family had a go.

We've been using the official prompt list from Jake Parker (http://mrjakeparker.com/inktober/) and I've been posting daily on Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr, with the latter being public, so if you want to see ALL of my drawings go take a look.

In the meantime, here are some of my favourites so far:
Inktober Day 4 - Underwater

Inktober Day 8 - Crooked

Inktober Day 9 - Screech

Inktober Day 11 - Run

Inktober Day 13 - Teeming

Inktober Day 17 - Graceful

Inktober Day 18 - Filthy

Inktober Day 20 - Deep

With only a few days to go, I'm feeling pretty accomplished in that I haven't missed a single day of the challenge, although producing a complete drawing each day is proving exhausting. Sometimes I have an idea straight away, other days I have to brainstorm a bit on the prompt to come up with a drawing. Strangely, those drawings I've had to work on and struggled to come up with something suitable to match the prompt, or had to do preliminary sketches or thumbnails, are the ones I think have been the best ones. A lesson in the learning perhaps?

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