Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by Artsy Reader Girl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share a love of all things books! I love thinking up my responses and the weekly blog hop to see what everyone else wrote!
This week’s prompt is a non-bookish freebie! This is perfect because I am very disorganised at the moment (I even missed last week), and my brain feels scattered all over the place (see yesterday’s digest). I’ve had the day off work and managed to do some proper tidying up in my office/craft room/library, including (re)organising the bookshelves, and on there I found my old sketch book!
This is the sketch book I used to take with my every Saturday morning for the Meet Up I used to organise. We’d meet in a Waterstones cafe and work on our drawings or writing, and just chat. Sometimes I miss having that weekly time just to mess about creatively! Now, I am no artist! I did GCSE Art, and I quit A Level Art. I can do a reasonable drawing if I put a lot of effort into it, but I’ve never solidly practised any skills, so I’m not very good! I enjoy it though, it’s fun to just mess about, and I love bad art. One of my favourite things I’ve ever made was an “ugly’ portrait of my brother for Christmas!
The crap ones with the wonky eyes are actually my favourites, and I get a lot of joy out of looking back through this book!
It’s done me good to do so because it feels like it’s been a really long time since I last exercised any of my hands-on creative muscles (aside from a couple of hours sculpting Knob Ross out of clay on my hen weekend!). The last thing I made was the floral wreath at Christmas, which was from a pattern in a magazine. The last thing I designed myself from scratch and made was the Cat Portrait in October!
I have one Hobbycraft embroidery kit (a gift from many Christmases ago!) I’m finishing up this week (hopefully), and then I’m excited to start working on something new and revive my craft blog!
Anyway, here are my favourite pieces from my old sketch book. I had this from 2018 to around 2019, I think. Maybe one of them I remember working on during the pandemic. I put them in chronological order, so you can see how I evolved as an “artist”!
- Close-up portrait of angry young man about to have nervous ATOMIC breakdown. I believe that was the title of the stock image I used as a reference. Fantastic. Helpfully, I dated this, so we know when I started this sketchbook! This has my classic flat face and wonky eyes, I can definitely tell it’s my work!
2. Fashion dog. I was very proud of the movement I got into the hair.
3. Angel shredding lute. My reference for this was a photo I took of this angel rocking it in the corner of a portrait of baby Jesus I saw in Venice.
4. ‘I don’t care’. I clearly remember working on this one while off sick, sitting in my bed. Yes, it was supposed to be Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman). This one makes me laugh more than any other. I don’t know how I didn’t notice that one eye is twice the size of the other. I love it.
5. Hide The Pain Harold. Remember the memes of this guy? I am actually proud of my colour work on this one.
6. Tobias Funke, M.D. Analrapist. Any Arrested Development fans?
7. Ugly dog in wig. The second in the series! I love this little guy.
8. Happy pig. Very pleased with my colour work on this, I actually think this one is good!
9. Mr Bubz. He was also a meme for a while, I think.
10. Dog in rainbow wig. I loved a dog in a wig!
11. Happy dog. I am proud of this one, too! He’s so happy!
12. Giraffe. This is probably my best work (aside from Ron, obviously). This photo is actually still one of my desktop backgrounds!
13. Angry Dennis. Any Always Sunny Fans? I think I captured the rage quite well, but the skin tones got away from me… I kind of like how it makes him look more inhuman and demonic, though!
14. Good God Lemon. This is the last one in my sketch book! I have a vague idea that I did this one during the pandemic, actually. I don’t think I worked on it at my old Meet Up. Alec Baldwin is looking very pouty!
Since 2019, I stopped drawing and took up hand embroidery! I have shared my past works on my Embroidy blog category, if that’s your thing! I’d love to find more crafty blogs.
These are so fun!
I’m not good at drawing, but I love seeing other people’s work.
These are great! The giraffe is stunning, but I think for the vibes, my favorite is Fashion Dog. 😀
I can barely draw stick figures, so I’m in awe of your talent and ability! Thanks for sharing.
Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
These look great.
The craft blog community largely died when instagram came out. I was part of huge quilting, stitching and knitting communities in the 2000s and by 2012 there weren’t many left. It was a shame as instagram didn’t provide the same thing and those of us who didn’t want to join lost contact with a lot of crafting friends around the internet.
I was still doing a lot of craft quite heavily up until the end of 2022 when I restarted my blog with an intention to get back into that community if I could find any of it left, or find new members of what remained of it. Life went a bit weird so somehow my blog ended up being skewed to books but I’m hoping to get my craft back soon so you’ll start to see more of that popping up. I miss it and how much it helped my mental health.
I’ll look forward to seeing your completed project and what you pick up next.
Thank you Nic!
Yeah Instagram still seems to be where everyone is. I follow people there but I don’t check that account much now because I got so bored of the same ‘Reels’ over and over again. I don’t like videos, I want pictures!
I look forward to seeing what you’re working on too!
I love the dogs in wigs. 🙂