The start of Jaime Lannister!

Well, my laptop is still working! I also had a fantastic holiday, I didn't want to come back, who would with pictures like this?

Porto Cristo, Mallorca

The day after I came off holiday I decided to make my back yard a usable space, it's a good suntrap for the afternoon and early evening, and it was just a dumping ground before. Now it's nice: 

Anyway, I've not done much art again since coming back (and I did zero on holiday), but I've been working on Jaime Lannister today:

I did do another Cersei Lannister test on the new paper, and I really didn't like it, so I've gone back to my original paper that I did Cersei Lannister on, and I'll be using that going forward. Plans for next week it to just carry on with this project :) There's a website coming back online, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, it's called Briefbox. They were hacked last year, and took the opportunity to sort out their security, and upgrade the website too. I'll have a look at it when it's back online. The owners post briefs online for you to work on (ie logo design, graphic design, illustration, etc), but they're made-up. It's quite good to use to practise. The old website is still accessible: http://briefbox.me/

I've also come across a concept I like the look of: A bullet journal, you can read more on it here:  https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/how-to-start-a-bullet-journal?utm_term=.do6YMLDBQb#.brOxvy6M3A

Anyway, I'm off to watch the Canadian Grand Prix (my favourite, Jenson Button has just dropped out of the race as his engine set on fire), so I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205688849/ For once it's not anything arty, but I feel like since just before my holiday and after my tolerance to idiots is improving!

Schoolism complete

So I finished Schoolism last Monday, and listened to the book excerpt from Bobby Chiu. It was quite insightful. I feel from doing the Painting Creatures course I've learned a lot, and also learned how to figure out quick and easier ways of doing things. I've also learned that using reference is not cheating if applied correctly, although I've learned this several times in the past few years it still comes back to give me a kick up the arse.

As such, since finishing the Schoolism course I've done no art at all. Nothing. Nada. Zip. So I did a few figure drawings this evening:

On Friday I attended my first Christmas party for my new job, and I was absolutely annihilated. I've never had a hangover so bad - I was still being sick at 8pm on Saturday! Needless to say this has inspired me to come out with quotes I'll never stick to, like 'I'm never drinking again'. I probably won't drink too much over Christmas now as I've had my blow-out for the Christmas period.

I'm off to Amsterdam on Thursday as part of my birthday celebrations (the big 3-0, eek!). Don't think I'll be drinking much while there, but I have some expeditions planned - the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh museum, and we have a couple of shows at the Boom Chicago comedy club booked too. I can't wait! I went to Amsterdam a few years ago, and loved it so much that I've always wanted to go back. It's such a vibrant city, and we didn't do half of what we wanted to do the last time we were there. That, and the fact we were knackered from walking around on the first day didn't leave us with much energy to enjoy the city for the remainder of our time there.

Well, I hope you're all getting ready for Christmas - I managed to put my boyfriend off from putting up the Christmas tree until 3rd December, and now it looks like a festive elf has sneezed all over our living room; there's tinsel everywhere!

Well, right now I'm going to finish watching my recording of The Hunt, narrated by David Attenborough. I love everything he narrates, and the camera skills of the crew for this series are just astonishing.

I won't be posting a blog post next week due to said holiday above :)

And last but not least, my Pinterest of the Week: http://batkamal.tumblr.com/post/70928746752

Week 4: 1000 days of drawing

Hi everyone :) I'm back off my hols and I did no drawing whatsoever, did you really expect anything different? ;)

I was back on it as of Monday though, and have been drawing every day again:

22. Something you miss. Pizza! I miss this so much due to dieting, but since eating clean since Feb if I do eat bad my body hates it!

23. Something you need. I always need more sleep, I've been poorly since the end of my holiday, and last week really was a struggle with sleep.

24. A couple. This is my boyfriend and I dicking about at a festival a few years ago

25. Scenery. This is a sunset at Queenstown, New Zealand

26. Something you don't like. I hate tuna! Raw, cooked, steak, tinned, blegh, it's all disgusting

27. Someone you love. This is a very unflattering picture of my boyfriend

28. Anything you like. The stuff I was thinking of to draw I had already done before, so I thought I'd draw a quick chibi-style of my boyfriend and I on our cruise last year

I've also been looking at arty things on the internet, which I'd like to share with you. The following link makes me feel extremely patriotic, although you should watch it to find out what the UK has given to the art world! http://www.creativebloq.com/creativity/englands-cultural-history-91516907

Also, I'm not sure if I'm going to take part in Inktober. I'm drawing every day anyway, I'm not sure drawing in pen is going to help my skills. I am finally starting to learn what I like drawing, I like drawing portraits, and I really enjoyed the scenery piece. I'm always blown away by amazing concept art for games and films, I'd love to be able to draw something like that one day, but for now I'm pretty happy drawing from my photos :)

Newquay & Magic The Gathering

I'm back! :) My weather fears were confirmed while we holidayed in Newquay, the weather was typically British when we arrived:

But it soon cheered up:

The weather was very hit and miss though. We didn't leave our campsite for the first 3 days as the weather was so bad. Cornwall is really nice, but I thought Newquay was a bit of a dump. St Ives was my favourite town. We also went to Lands End, the Minack Theatre, Tintagel Castle, the Eden Project, Healeys Cider Farm at the St Austell Brewery. In a nutshell I wouldn't go back to Cornwall, as I feel like I've seen everything I want to see there, and for where we live in the UK it's a long way to drive to go to the seaside!

One thing that really made holiday (and probably shouldn't have) was a shop called Edge. It was really 3 shops in one, being run by one person, a second-hand game/DVD shop, comics & fancy dress. Rob, the owner, started talking to us about board and card games (not your typical Monopoly boards games), and we bought a card game called Love Letter. The following week we went for a gaming night that Rob invited us to, and we played a few games of Betrayal at House on the Hill. What a fantastic game! However Rob didn't have any copies of this game available to sell, so we went back a couple of days later and bought another card game called Card of the Dead, and a board game called Pandemic. Rob then introduced us to Magic The Gathering, and this game is now my new obsession! I won't bore you anymore with the details, but we ended up coming home early as the weather was due to take a turn for the worse, and we didn't want to pack the trailer tent away if it was raining.

Anyway, that's enough about my holiday, unsurprisingly I didn't really draw anything, but I had a few token sketches I will ashamedly share with you:

 

So now what I'd like to say is I'll be back on with drawing, but truthfully we all know what I'm like ;) I will endeavour to do something though. I quite like what I did before my holiday, in that I went straight to BriefBox and picked a project before I could change my mind!