Lighter nights and portrait WIP

Not much to report on this week, I've gotten further with my coloured pencil drawing of my best friend's little boy:

When I drew him in pencil I didn't think his cheeks looked chubby enough, (as he has cute chubby cheeks), but now I've fleshed him out a bit and done a bit with his hair it doesn't look so bad now.
I spent ages trying to get the shadows correct on his face, but then I wanted to lay down some different colour, so I have a quick 10 minutes on his hair and started his hoody. I'll carry on working on this during the week.

The clocks went forward an hour today, so it's 7.31pm and it's still light :) I think the sun has set now (hard to see behind all of the houses on my estate), but it means spring is finally here :) Although it is going to be miserable and rain tomorrow. Ha, I'm a typical Brit, talking about the weather!

I've gone back on Tropico, it's nice to have some chill-out time on that. That, and the fact I haven't gone anywhere this weekend. I've bought a trailer tent so I can holiday in the country when the weather gets better, and that's about it!

And at Slimming World last Monday I reached my first half-stone award! In 5 weeks I've lost 7 pounds, keep it coming!

I've finished reading the Freelance Handbook, and made LOADS of notes. I've downloaded Evernote, so I have lots to research now, such as legal stuff, setting fees, wellbeing, resources, etc.

I did manage to critique a couple of pieces on DeviantArt last week, but I think for now I'm going to give my weekly tasks a rest, as let's face it I don't really do them despite trying to make myself accountable on here. Instead I'm going to focus on research the Freelance Handbook, and carry on with my WIP.

Have a good week everyone!

Logo design, imbalance in work life, and competitions

This week during my lunch breaks I've been working on a logo for my brand if I ever decide to go freelance. However just in case people try to plagiarise it I've decided not to add it on here just yet. When the time is right I will. All I will say is for the logo I seemed to finish it very quickly, and I'm not sure if this is a good thing. I did 4 sketches for variety. chose one design to run with, mocked it up, changed it some more, and now I'm happy with it. Luckily I hid the text layer which has the same on just in time for when the office manager interrupted my lunch break! :) But I'm guessing the process above is similar to having a paying client: mock up designs, finish a rough, make amends and finalize design.

Also my partner and myself have talked of going into the mobile catering business. We've both agreed the company name needs to be witty, but I'm not happy with what we've come up with yet, so I've yet to start any work on the logo design for that. At least if I go freelance I can start that whenever, but I'm loathe to start up the mobile catering business until we've bought a house. If we are self-employed it will be very difficult to get a mortgage, but we can do our research in the meantime.

I'm pretty jaded with work at the moment, I don't feel like I'm ever going to get anywhere than where I'm at now. Just to explain my current situation:

• I left a floundering company in my home town to work out-of-town at a company that is doing well for itself. I was hoping to side-step into the same job, but I knew I had to start in a menial job in customer service.
• Despite numerous efforts to get back into a studio environment I've pretty much been ignored by everyone who would help me achieve this. I've been stuck in limbo like this for the past 3.5 years.
• A new person has been appointed to create a new studio, and even though it sounds promising the new studio will be a 1.5hr drive away (or 50mins on the train), and even though they want me to be the 'middle man' between customer service and the new studio I honestly don't think it's going in the right direction for me (or even a change of job for that matter).

The new person wants me to be the go-between, but I already do that, so I don't know if my job role would change at all, and I'm getting very frustrated not getting anywhere in a creative role. My manager has washed her hands of the situation (she has told me herself), and I feel the only way I'll get to do what I'm passionate about in life is to go freelance. I've even put myself through a home-distance learning course and put myself through exams for Adobe, all at my own cost and time, and it feels like it has been for nothing. It's not changed anything in my job role, and it hasn't garnered any more attention for new jobs. So I will persevere in going freelance.

When I went to stop with my nan last month she handed me an article out of the paper on drawing. It was on how to draw in perspective, and how to colour with coloured pencils. Even though I didn't find it much help I did notice a competition to draw either a place or a portrait in coloured pencil, so I've decided to enter it.

The subject is my best friend's little boy, and he's quite hard to draw as he's so cute! I couldn't find a brilliant photo of him, so I've gone with the best one I could find. The ones I like of him are where he takes selfies with his mum's phones, but they're very badly focussed and lit :) I finished the pencil sketch today, and intend to colour it in:

Apologies for the awful lighting, I've tried my best to make it look OK. I haven't done much with the hair as it's blonde and curly, so I just wanted the general shape on paper

The competition doesn't end until April. After chalk my favourite medium (in school) was coloured pencils, so I hope this turns out good! I asked my partner for his opinion, and I phrased it like this 'Did you look at my drawing and think 'that looks like X', or did you look at my drawing and think 'that's X!'. He said he thought the second options, which is good, although I don't think it looks anything like my subject!

I've not played Tropico since last weekend now, but I haven't done much in the way of art either, oops!

And just on a side note I had my family over for a roast dinner today (Sunday dinners are an institution), and I had to take a photo of this massive potato:

This bad boy made enough roast potatoes for 5 people! The photo doesn't do the size justice, it would've made a wicked jacket potato!

So going to my usual theme of tasks I set myself for the week and usually fail:

Critique at least one piece of artwork - didn't suceed, I did look but didn't critique anything.

Contribute to an active art forum - I still don't think I've joined one yet, any suggestions? Was thinking Conceptart.org, or the Sycra forums, but I'm quite intimidated by the high standard of work on both of those forums. I'm not keen on DeviantArt, even though I have an account on there.

Start work on a logo - done, and even finished it!

Drawing for the competition - started

So tasks for this week are to carry on with the coloured sketch, and join an art forum. I'll try to critique too, but I get to this time of the day (9.37pm) and I'm usually pretty tired so I'm off to bed.

Taking a break, RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

I've been working on The Lady every lunchbreak at work for the last 4 weeks. This equates to about 10 hours, which is sloooow! I know where I can pick up speed in Photoshop, but by the time I realised it was a bit late for turning back with the piece. I've finished it off today and added some colour:

Original (photo reference my own)

The Lady

I wanted to learn how to draw anatomy from this piece, however I found that I had done the figure in a couple of days' lunch breaks, and the rest was shading. I think next time I want to learn some anatomy I need to do some 'quick' drawings of the figure, rather than focussing on the whole. I am quite please with how this turned out though, and I had to deliberately lighten the piece for it to look OK on screen. For some reason my Photoshop view vs when I load it on here darkens it considerably. Any C&C welcome :)

Any avid reader of the Fantasy genre will know that Sir Terry Pratchett passed away on Thursday. I first read a Pratchett book when a friend lent me Mort (after sticking rigidly with Philip Pullman and Harry Potter). When reading Mort I could not believe the scope of Pratchett's imagination, or the way he would have me laughing out loud whilst reading a book! His satirical way with words, paired with a fantasy world like no other lead him to be the best-selling author in the UK until JK Rowling knocked him from the top spot.

I was absolutely stunned when Pratchett passed away. He'd been suffering from a rare form of Alzheimer's since 2007, so his death was not unexpected, but it's still knocked me for six. I follow him on Twitter, and I should've realised something was wrong as he's not tweeted for months. I will sorely miss him, and the fact I won't get to read any more of his amazing stories and watch his characters and the Discworld develop. I'm grateful he wrote as many books as he did, and I've nearly read them all now (Making Money is the next book in my list). Thankyou Terry for the laughs, the escape from the Roundworld, and the legacy you have left, rest in peace.

In tribute I was thinking of getting a small tattoo done, and I've quickly worked up a piece I like. A lot of people have the Death of Rats inked on them, but its not a character I've quite gelled with. Then I was thinking of getting Death himself, but that would be a mass of dark ink on my skin, and I like to keep my tattoo's nice and simple. Then I thought of getting the Discworld tattoo'd (a flat world, supported on the backs of 4 elephants, in turn standing on the back of a giant turtle 'flying' through space), but it would have to be quite a big tattoo to do it justice:

The Great A'Tuin, artwork copyright the fantastic Paul Kidby

So I've opted for something a little more simple. A quote Roundworld people use is 'the turtle moves', so I've come up with this:

I think it's a fitting tribute to a man who has made my life so much richer. I thought I was a bit weird in my grief over his death, as no-one at my work reads his books so don't understand, but I'm part of the Discworld Monthly group on Facebook and there are hundreds, if not thousands of people that share the same grief as me. I'm not usually a sad person, but it's nice to know there are other people that feel the same, and I'm lucky in that my partner understands too.

I didn't set myself any tasks last week, as I think I knew I needed a break from drawing in my lunch break, so I've gone back to reading a book (funnily enough it was Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett!), and I feel recharged.

This week I would like to keep on at my usual theme I've had since starting this blog:

Critique at least one piece of artwork

Contribute to an active art forum

I've thought of a name I would like to work under for freelancing artwork & graphic design, so I'd like to make a start on a logo this week.

And I've also spotted a competition I'd like to do, it's drawing in pencil either a portrait of someone, or a landscape. I've decided I'll draw my best friend's little boy, as he's the cutest thing. It's been a while since I've used pencils & crayons, but crayons used to be on of my preferred methods of drawing, so it'll be nice to get back into it.

I also started Tropico 4 last week (a strategy computer game), which I'm slightly addicted to, ha! I only bought the game 2 years ago and now I'm getting round to playing it. So I'll try to not play too much of that this week.

Have a good week everyone!

"Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life" - Sir Terry Pratchett.

The lady in greyscale, and daffodils

I've managed to get the basic shading down for the lady I'm drawing:

Looks a little dark...

And I stuck to drawing a daffodil nearly every day:

And I even managed to critique somebody's artwork over on DeviantArt. Although I've yet to join a different online art community. And I didn't work any more on my portfolio piece.

Ticking over

I've not done much in the way of artwork this week. I'm still working on the statue picture, my WIP is below:

And I've given myself a new challenge. My favourite flowers are daffodils, and I've just bought a fresh bunch today. So everyday I'm going to draw the daffodil, from being closed, to opening up, to wilting and dying. At least then I'll get something done!

Anyway, I thought I would give you all a little of my current status in life. Hopefully this will explain the lack of any new material. I'm halfway through watching season 4 of Breaking Bad, I like to sleep a lot, and I'm overweight and seriously trying to lose weight now. Unfortunately the combination of the above means it leaves very little time during the week to sketch. Most weeknights I come home and eat dinner and clean up, prepare my food for the next day, go for a walk, sit down and watch an episode of Breaking Bad, catch up on the day's social media & news, then go to bed. In regards to my weight I joined Slimming World 3 weeks ago, and it seems to be working. Over the years I've a number of times to exercise, joining a gym or doing Insanity workouts, but because my eating habits were bad I've never lost more than a few pounds. On the BMI scale I'm at 29. Obese is 30. And this year got to a point where I'm sick of wearing the same old t-shirt and jeans combo, I want to wear clothes that look and fit nice. Slimming world is all about eating healthily, mostly raw food, and I prepare it every night for the following day. However this takes up quite a bit of time.

I've already improved on making sketching a daily habit. I'm seriously considering giving up Facebook again. I did so for a month last year, and felt liberated by it. However I missed the photo's my best friend used to put on of her young son. But that doesn't seem to happen as often now. And when I had got rid of Facebook I found I wasn't procrastinating as much. So we'll see.

Anyway, after those rather boring paragraphs of myself, let's see of the tasks I set for myself what I completed and what I didn't:

Actively participate in an active art forum - not done
Critic at least one piece of art - not done
Try to promote my blog at least once - half done, again I only posted it to Twitter
Start a graphic design piece for my portfolio - done! 😊 I wasn't sure what to work on. Last year my partner and I talked about running our own mobile food business, specialising in coffee and cake. So he suggested I work on our logo. The only trouble is we haven't decided on a name yet. So at the moment I only have a quick 5 minute sketch. But at least I've started something!

To try and kick my arse into gear with my tasks if any of you have anything you'd like critiquing please let me know in the comments below. Have a good week!