Drawing badly

So after peculiar buildings I have moved onto peculiar faces. I am doing a drawing Domestika now and finding it very interesting. I have never really believed that practice makes you better (why aren't I good it at IMMEDIATELY WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME) but this latest course is about taking the pressure off and just doing bad drawings over and over. Which I can do! Then you see which ones aren't as bad as the others, and perhaps why, and keep going.

As a result, I now have a sketchbook full of pages and pages of scary not-quite-human faces. From the side. I find it much easier to draw people facing to my left. Is it because I am right-handed?

From the front. I just use random photos or drawings of people on the internet to copy (and these look nothing like any of them).

In marker pens, and pencils, cartoons, real, big or little.

All pretty terrible to be honest, and not getting noticeably any better. But it is a pleasant way to occupy my hands while watching Gogglebox UK and Hoarders. Classy!

Little beach re-visit

Yes Dad, that was where you broke John's key, I remember it well! On the plus side, I am always super careful pushing our roller door up now, it was definitely a life lesson....

Here we are in 2003 having a picnic there (coincidentally for number one's birthday). An actual hard copy photo from the album. It was clearly a much calmer and warmer day than last weekend.

My little dribble sand baby.

Wintry

 This was the view as I left for work - fog! Low and misty and cold. 

Fortunately Saturday was a lot brighter and I went for my 15km long walk. Definitely winter, but at least some sunshine. I didn't take my jacket off though. My fitness was fine although I got a blister on my little toe that was the same size as my little toe. Kind of disgusting but kind of fascinating. I don't pop them, it went down in a couple of days.

I seemed to spend most of the rest of the weekend shopping and running errands. There were a lot of little things that needed doing, and I'd been ignoring most things for ages, so it was time for the nonsense. Yawn.

More strange buildings

Here are some more of these buildings I've been happily copying. I like my brush marker the best, and I've ordered some more, with a dip pen, for a different addictive rabbit hole. I may have been a bit optimistic buying a 100 page isometric graph paper book, this is probably my limit.

Work is busy, as we ramp up for parliament opening again, but the weekend is nice. 

And for something different, here is a photo from number two's short play he wrote, directed and acted in for the Playground youth showcase at the Drift arts festival back in April. A commissioned work, for which he got paid $500 (that he shared with the other three actors (fellow students I believe)). Fabulous! Yes, they are in early 19th century gear, it was a Bridgerton riff if I heard him correctly.

Queen's Birthday weekend

Another long weekend means another happy few days at the beach, especially when I took an extra day off (to avoid traffic, I tell myself, but really it's just for another day's holiday) and had a proper break. It was freezing and windy but who cares! The sun shone, mostly, and I sewed a bit in the mornings - successfully this time - and went for walks in the afternoon. I seem to have all of my puff back which is a relief. This is me trying to use the panorama function on my phone. It just seems to distort it, I don't think I'm doing it right.

This is from Sunday I went to a beach about half an hour to the north, where we used to come and stay with friends back when the kids were very tiny. I took a nostalgia drive past their old house, and the boat ramp on the lake where we would make mud puddles for hours and look at tiny fish, then I went out to the main beach. While I was parking I wondered why I had no memory of this beach, and did we never go there? And then I went out onto the beach and remembered EXACTLY why we never took the children there, and didn't even swim there ourselves. It is unpatrolled and long and exposed and wild. Admittedly there was a super swell on the weekend, but even at its calmest that is one scary beach. 

I went for a long walk up to where the lake outlet is. You could throw a tennis ball across the lake entrance to the north side, which is lovely and more sheltered, but it's nearly half an hour by road. There are endangered shore birds that I can't name but enjoyed watching, and a couple of people shore fishing who didn't seem to be catching anything. This is the lake, and where we spent most of our time paddling, nearly twenty years ago (gulp).

And then I went around to a more sheltered beach that I hadn't been to for just over 19 years - and I remember it because it was number one's first birthday - Easter Sunday - and we were there with our friends with the house, and other friends came down, and we had a picnic at this peaceful little bay. 

The moon was coming up and the temperature was dropping, so time to go home for slippers and sparkling wine. Excellent weekend.

It's still cold!

Still huddled by the fire here - at least today is sunny after a week of biting winds and sleet and clouds. I've been at work mostly which isn't too bad, but the weekend was very quiet. Other than a friend's housewarming, which was lovely, and a bit of shopping where I feebly attempted to buy new jeans, I barely left the house. Apparently skinny jeans are no longer fashionable, so I thought I would broaden my wardrobe. I did end up buying some very wide leg jeans but on reflection I think I look ridiculous, so time will tell. If I ever wear them I'll take a photo.

My most recent rabbit hole is isometric fantasy buildings, using my new isometric graph paper, and my new marker pens. Basically I have just been copying Rob Turpin's drawings - line for exact line - and it is slow, and detailed, and fun. I should branch out and design my own buildings, but given the amount of time it takes me to figure out the joins and planes when I'm copying, I can't imagine if I could do it from scratch.

One of my markers is a brush pen so I can fill in the black bits. I have seven sizes of pen so I can do some fat and thin lines, and it took me ages to figure out where to have the heavier lines so it looks normal, and not odd.  I do it in pencil first, then the various pens.

Copying does have its charms though, because I do the exact same squiggles as he does and it magically turns into water, or wood, or stone. Even though it's just little lines, the viewing brain picks up the hint and runs with it! Very cool.