Mid March: Happy Spring!

Hello again! How are you? How have the last few weeks been treating you? Has the weather been pleasant where you are? Here, the weather's been...interesting. There's been so much fluctuation our poor barometer doesn't know which way it's going from one hour to the next! But happily we are finally into Spring, and I hear that it will be warmer than usual!

This post is going to be a bit on the short side. Last week my girls were home for March Break so I didn't get too much done on the creative front. I did keep up with my Sketchbook Skool class, Seeing, so I have a bunch of pictures to show off, but I only managed to half finish the vector art tutorial I was doing, I hope to get it done this week.

Here's what I did in week 1 of Seeing taught by Danny Gregory: 

Our first assignment, was to draw all the nooks and crannies you see in a piece of toast. No pre-drawing, take it slow and steady and try to draw as much as you can. I used a piece of bread from a Half-and-half loaf of whole wheat bread we made in our bread machine. Two things to say about this exercise, one, pick a piece of bread with fewer and larger holes, and two, see number one, it's that important to your sanity!

The second assignment was to use a sort of Fast and Slow technique that Danny's very fond of. You pick an object, it can be anything really, he chose a bicycle, and start by painting in an outline of the shape with a medium-large brush. Okay, I didn't do too well with that part, but I wanted to give the whole shape of the object. You do this part quickly, under a minute. Then, with a pen or marker, after the paint has dried, you slowly draw the object, working from the outside-in, adding as much detail as you can.

Week 2 was a different beast entirely, self-portraits taught by Koosje Koene:

I don't really have anything to add to these self-portraits aside from the written text with each drawing, I hope you can read them okay. We were assigned to do 7 self-portraits in the week, some from a mirror, some from a photo, and 1 from your memory/imagination. I really like seeing my progress here from the first to the last! Can't say that any of these sketches look like me, but I already knew how difficult that would be with a quick sketch, so mainly I focused on the technique and I am not disappointed! Besides, in many of these I look much younger and who can complain about that?!

I have to say that between these first two weeks my mind has been blown away! Already I find that I'm braver and more confident in trying new things and experimenting (which was part of the main reason I signed up for the course). I'm less hesitant to try something out for fun, there's way less stress to get it right the first time! I got to try out some techniques that I've always wanted to do, but was never brave enough to try. Also, after the self-portraits, I find that I'm less critical of myself in my physical appearance, which is an interesting side-affect.

Well, that's all I have for you for now. I can't wait to see what the next two weeks will bring with my course. I'm also going to get see if I can't get more exercise into my day, so far I've not been succeeding there. But I have at least been keeping up with my meditation, even during the March Break, and I'm happy with my results so far.

I hope the next few weeks are good to you and yours. Hopefully we'll have more sunshine and warmer weather!

Until next time,

Mandy

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