This last week, I have been trying to get out of my knitting block, without much success, until I got a kick up the backside when I received a very promising email a couple of days ago. I can feel my enthusiasm returning, even though I haven’t picked up the needles yet – I’m waiting to have an irrepressible urge, because then, I know it will be good. Believe me. Without the “urge”, nothing of value will come out. (But I’ve finished writing the pattern for the socks that I talked about in my previous post)
But in the meantime, I have been distracting myself by reading and practicing other crafts. Some, fibre related (since last Monday, there’s a spinning wheel in the house!), but that will be the subject of another blog post later. Some,not related at all to fibre or fabric. At all.
I have been reading about journaling, as I would like to keep a tangible, touchable, readable “journal” for lack of a better word, of Lucas’ progresses and funny words. Oddly, this has led me to the world of Art Journaling. I knew this existed, but I had never really looked at it. It is quite fascinating.
As much as I think that this isn’t really for me, it sure drove me to pick up my pens and pencils and I have been doodling and sketching quite a bit over the last couple of days.
It all started with those green eyes on the right. I sat down while Lucas was in the bath, grabbed a very cheap sketching book we had bought for him and that he doesn’t really want to use (except when I’m actually drawing in it). His beeswax crayons were just there and I doodled the eyes. I’ve always liked drawing eyes. Always. It’s my doodle of choice. All sorts of eyes.
I was quite pleased with the end result, so I decided to draw a mouth on the opposite page. Which led to the single eye (I had ripped the top corner of the page a few days earlier to write down a phone number!) and before I knew it, I had a whole face. And I quite liked it.
As a kid, I used to sketch and doodle all the time. But because I wasn’t any good at drawing realistic looking things, my mum kinda killed my hopes of me doing anything artistic as a grown up. All I wanted to do, when I was 12 or 13 was to be a fashion designer and I drew thousands of dresses and silhouettes. Part of me is a bit sad that I didn’t stick to my guns, part of me is happy I sort of got there in the end (though I wish I had kept going with fashion drawings, because now, when I need to do a sketch for a submission, I am way out of my comfort zone, when it used to be almost natural!)
Faces had (have?) always been a challenge for me, but in my early 20s, I discovered manga drawing, and my faces sort of came together again. I tried very hard to make it work for me, but faces still eluded me. It was never quite right. But these last couple of days, as I’ve picked up my pens to draw faces for the first time in over 8 years, I am quite happy with my “style”.
I am NOT a manga sketcher by any means, but I like the big eyes and the minimal face features. After all, aren’t the eyes the “mirror of the soul”? If sketching is a way of expressing what you can’t put in words, it feels right for me that the eyes should be bigger than in reality.
This one is the last drawing I did (before taking the pics) and is my favourite of them all (so far).
There’s something about this girl’s face that I really like. I’m really drawn to her eyes. If you look into them, you might see what she’s trying to tell you.
I will try to keep on drawing, even though I am my biggest enemy when it comes to put pen to paper. I don’t need critiques, I’ve got myself to point out all the negative things about my “portraits” (hahaha…). But it is quite liberating to at least try. The girl on the pink paper was a test – I wasn’t sure I could do it, so I drew her on a loose paper rather than “ruin” my 0.50 euro sketch book. She’s not perfect by any means, but really, why did I doubt so much I could draw her?!
I will try not to go into art journaling as such – I’m not sure I’ve got the space (physical and mental) for another full-on craft. Even though right now, I’d like a bigger, better sketch book (that could take the ink of my Promarkers)!
