Forward progress

or "Self-indulgent internal chatter."

I gave up art as a Leaving Cert subject in March or so of 2008 (because grades are just terribly important and I wasn't going to get an A1, good job seventeen-year-old brain), and after a five-year hiatus full of intentions, I finally started making another concerted effort at drawing about two and a half months ago. I've been drawing nearly every day since then. Even within that length of time, it's encouraging to look at the attempts from the start of my sketchbook compared with now, and it fills me with optimism that in a few months I'll look at something I was happy with today and think it just precious that I thought that was any good, because I'll have improved so much by then.

So here are some early and recent drawings! I want to try to justify the early ones by pointing out what's wrong with them, but surely the fact that the later ones are better indicates I can see some of what was wrong with them, and shut up brain.

25/7/'13: The first face in my sketchbook, Bifur from the Hobbit. (Reference.) About the same standard as I had when I was fifteen or sixteen.

15/9/'13: Sylar/Zachary Quinto. (I've started watching Heroes - Season 1 is excellent, and Season 2 is nowhere near as slick but still entertaining, and I love a good villain.) This probably bears more resemblance to the original than anything I've drawn so far. (Reference.) 

30/7/'13: John Watson/Martin Freeman. Face number five in the book, still trying to work out how heads are shaped, and how to get the eyes to look in the direction I want them to. (I can't find the picture I used as a reference, but it's fair to say there's only the vaguest of resemblance. Also, the ratio of screencaps/stills to fanart yielded by Googling "John Watson BBC" is approximately 1:1. Good for you, fanartists.)

19/9/'13: Also John Watson/Martin Freeman! Still doesn't look like him, but it looks like it could be a person this time. (Reference.)

I've maybe been cheating by drawing almost solely men's faces, as I find the harder lines easier to draw. Next: women's and children's faces! I don't have an end goal with this, I'd just like be to able to draw and have the end result look like the subject.

This week I...

... went to a Social Sketch meetup! I wasn't sure if everyone else would be drawing from memory, or if we were meant to be drawing other people in the pub (which I wouldn't be up for, they are not there for staring at), so I brought my little carved tree spirit to have something unobtrusive to draw. I was happy enough with some of the drawings, though handing around sketch pads at the end made me want to crawl into a hole. I wanted to look at other people's though, so it would have been unsporting not to though mine onto the pile, though I couldn't refrain from pointing out that I had only restarted drawing again three weeks ago, after five years of next to nothing.

I have a knee-jerk aversion to the word 'sketch'. When I was in fifth year, my art teacher told the class that from now on, nothing we did would be a 'sketch'. Sketches are rough, incomplete, not a full piece in themselves, and if that is the mindset with which you're approaching your work, you're not putting in the effort which will make you better. From now on, we would only draw. While I've drawn very irregularly since then, I've held onto that lesson. I draw roughly, lazily, badly, but I don't sketch.

... drew some other things with which I was varying degrees of happy! These were on the middle to upper end of the scale.

Reference was this illustration, but a decent-sized version in a book.

"It's what people do, isn't  it? Leave a note?"
Reference

Reference

 ... made Oreo truffles from this recipe! I can make tasty food, but I cannot make pretty food, and while looks aren't everything, I see something like this and feel shoddy by comparison. (I want nothing like I want to friendship-court that person.) On the plus side, they were delicious.

... took part in the Colour Dash! (More great photos here.) I had been under the impression that we'd be running through a constant barrage of paint dust, but I suppose in retrospect that would be terrible for people's breathing. There was a paint-throwing station at the 500m mark of each kilometre. (The figure I heard floating around as to the amount of paint was nine hundred tonnes, so perhaps my way was logistically impractical as well as unsafe.) It was only five kilometres, but I was trying to match pace with my far more athletic sister for the first two and a half, and even though she slowed down on my behalf my legs are feeling it today! The photos don't really convey the full extent of the colourful paintiness.

 ... finished another pair of Ailbhe gloves! This pair are in a DK yarn rather than aran, so the fabric isn't so stiff, with a seersucker stitch pattern.

... saw Dylan Moran at the Comedy Festival in the Iveagh Gardens! Life goal accomplished, though I'd still love to see him perform a full set. By the time the opening act had been on for a minute I was cringing inwardly and knotting my hands around each other in sympathetic embarrassment (Also, if your shtick or sense of humour revolves around making fun of people who aren't you, I don't trust you. If you think jokes about driving while high are a big lol, ha ha ha you might hit someone or injure them for life and that's so edgy), but by the time Dylan Moran had been on for a minute my face hurt from laughing. It was all new material as well, and really top-notch.

"The truth is, we are all going to die. We are all going to die. And people hate when you say that. Especially if you say it during sex."

... started my October birthday knitting! Will this be the year I'm finally organised for all of the gift-giving occasions in the latter quarter of the year? Hahaha no, Jen, that was a stupid question. But a girl can hope!

A productive week, all told!

Paris Je T'aime

I went to Paris last weekend! Here is some photographic evidence.

Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, and the Eiffel Tower from the wrong end of the Champs-Élysée. I brought my nice SLR camera, but as it uses film it will be a while before I do anything with the photos. Some of the the photos from my digital camera were unexpectedly quite nice, though.

I really love the fact that they have a permanently installed open-air book market along the canal. But not as much as I love...

Shakespeare and Company! It's a wonderful English-language bookshop. Stepping inside feels like stepping back in time, but for the covers on the books. It's like the old Chapters on Abbey Street, but with even more nooks and crannies. It is the sort of shop where a story should unfold. A lovely aspect of it is that they allow writers to stay for free in exhange for a few hours' work.

I took this photo because the title of the book on the far right makes it sound like Louisa May Alcott was writing for Mills and Boone for a while, but even more exciting than that is the fact that the book on the far left is about a haunted yarn shop. My boyfriend bought it for me. I'm embarrassingly excited to read it, but also apprehensive, because how can it possibly live up to that premise?

Go to France, buy English books. In my defence, the one at the bottom of the pile was for my mother. Against my defence, I went back two days later and bought myself another book.

This was written on the inside of the Sherlock Holmes collection, which came from the second-hand box. Hard luck, Matthieu.

The inside of the top floor of the Musée D'Orsay. I like this picture because it looks like some 1930's sci-fi.

This picture does not accurately depict how much this ice-cream looked like a flower, or how delicious it was.

I went to the Louvre and drew some sculptures. This one of Hercules turned out better than my drawings are prone to doing!

I am trying to get back into the habits of both drawing and proper photography (though films slows things down, and I really should join a photography club). Proof of same may start appearing.

FO: A wee small Eldritch Abomination

This is the very first thing I've crocheted that isn't a rectangle! It's not very good as such things go - certainly not on a par with my knitting - but I made a thing and I am proud.

I used the Cthulhu pattern from Creepy Cute Crochet to make this wee fella.

Surveying all that will one day be his.

Wee small wings.

With a one euro coin for comparison.

I used James C. Brett Supreme Soft and Gentle Baby DK, because I had reams of it over from a hat and I liked the colour. I also used a 2mm hook. The book recommended aran weight and a 3.5mm hook, and for those not into self-sabotage, I'm inclined to agree. I also think the eyes are a bit wonky - polymer clay or even googly eyes would have been better, he looks a bit insect-like as is. I feel a bit guilty about how it turned out as it's a present, but hopefully the fact that it is handmade with love AND the first such thing that I have handmade with love will trump its creepy bug-eyes.

Speaking of inadvertently creepy things, I made a Valentine's card for a friend with my left hand, with a view to it looking like a child had made it and being charming and adorable. The desired effect was not achieved.

All my attempts to show affection just come out terrifying :(

Nature is majestic.

I had labs four out of five days this week.  They partly consisted of drawing pre-prepared slides.  Here is a three-day-old chick embryo:

I tried to select the one which looked least like an alien.  There wasn't one.  But at least this week is getting me drawing, it's been a while!