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.