By Stephie, on Sunday 20th February, 2011 at 17:21 pm
 Grey Day. I don’t know what to say, where to start. I’m behind. With everything. And my mind is a complete blank. My mood has been up and down since I last wrote; down mostly. I’m exhausted, craving sleep and darkness, somewhere cosy and warm to curl up. I wish I had an open fire or a wood burning stove. I want to lie there staring at the flames until it lulls me to sleep. If I close my eyes I can feel the heat on my skin and smell the sweet woodsmoke. There is no fireplace here and it’s a definite lack, I’ve always thought an open fire makes a home. But I do my best to make it feel like home without one. There’s the smell of baking for one thing. A lemon drizzle cake with a tangy sharpness that can’t be beaten, a tea-time treat for Kim when he comes home later today. The recipe is from my dog-eared copy of Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, but she calls it a lemon-syrup loaf cake. The domestic. That’s what today’s been about. It’s grey outside and looks like the clouds are about to open any second, but they never do. I’ve been as far as the chicken coop today and no farther; the bleakness and wind had me scurrying back inside after a matter of minutes. A true February day: the shortest month, but the one that feels like the longest.
So what have you been doing today? I have other things to tell you about, show you, from the last week or so, but for now I’m going to go and cut a slice of cake, make a coffee and curl up under Kim’s half finished red and white quilt. I expect to wake in a couple of hours…
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Thursday 3rd February, 2011 at 17:23 pm
 Whisper. 3rd February 2011  Detail Meanderingly creative today; following an idea with no real expectations of outcome. I really love the outcome though. Today. Tomorrow may be different of course! This mixed media piece is a fusion of two pen and ink drawings and includes, wax, paper, fabric and machine stitching. There are some more details in my draw365 album, hope you like them  What have you been up to today?
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Sunday 30th January, 2011 at 01:31 am
Really? Has it been a whole week since I was last here? I feel guilty. I don’t know what I’ve been doing really. Running a lot I guess, 10 mile race last Sunday, track training on Tuesday and a club run on Wednesday, another 8 miles today. I’ve been nursing depression as usual, and having a little fun with friends too. Sometimes even depressed people can have a bit of fun; it’s called distraction. And of course I’ve been drawing. I’m getting a bit obsessed with the tree just beyond the garden. It’s another one of those things that’s always there in the same place, a bit like my face for the self-portraits! But each time I look at the sycamore it’s different, depending on the light and the time of day, the sky, clouds… People say I should draw it throughout the year to see changes in the seasons. Monet already did this of course, my favourite series being the one of the Thames and Houses of Parliament. At the moment though I don’t really have an agenda, they’re just sketches, but I’m intrigued by the light and the weather and the atmosphere that I try to capture. And, it’s an excuse to enjoy using the wonderful soft pastels I was given at Christmas! I’d like to do some more detailed drawings in pen and ink, but I think that would best be done outside – but we’re in minus numbers here folks so there’s fat chance of that until it warms up a bit! I’ve put together a couple of mosaics for you today. The top one is of some of my favourite sketches of the tree so far and the bottom one shows some of my favourite portraits by other artists contributing to the Draw365 Flickr gallery. I love them, but some of them beg the question “where does the boundary between drawing and painting lie?”. Is an ink ‘drawing’ still a drawing when it’s made with a brush? Is a gouache painting a painting, or is it a drawing because it has pencil marks beneath it? I’m sitting on the fence at the moment, which is unusual I know! I used to believe that a drawing had to be made with something predominantly ‘solid’: you hold something solid like chalk or a pencil, or a dip pen and the marks you make are entirely different from those you can make with a brush. Within this there’d be exceptions that blurred the boundary: pencil or pen and wash for example, but I believed the drawing part at least had to be visible! None of it matters of course, except that the name of the on-line gallery is draw365, so you’d expect to find plenty of drawings there. And you do of course, some of them are exceptional. 
Follow the links below to find out more about these expressive portraits and the artists who made them.
- No.431 – DarkSpanArtist
- 357/365 – Blugumbo
- 359/365 – Blugumbo
- ≈ – Verena Baumann
Back soon with something I made from fabric!
love Stephie
By Stephie, on Monday 17th January, 2011 at 02:28 am
Yep, today was the day I updated my Draw365 gallery with last week’s sketches. And a quick one from today. So, if you’re interested please go and have a look! Follow the link above – and don’t forget to tell me what you think. I’m not sure about the pencil scribbles myself, but I do like some of the pastel and pencil sketches, like the one here.
 Pastel and graphite in my A5 sketchbook Monday tomorrow. So what have you got planned? I had an appointment but I need a rest from ‘head stuff’ for a few days, so I’m going to give it a miss. It’s not the only appointment I’ve crossed out for the coming week. Sometimes it just gets too much and I feel like I need time to shut down and shut it out. I’ve been depressed for too long. I know that cutting off is something I do to cope. I know it’s not useful. It’s mostly destructive, but I’m telling myself that this is just a week, no more, no less. A week of withdrawal to spend staring at the walls in silence. And to make things quietly. And to run, listening to the sound of my breath and feeling the ground under my feet. But there’s a difference between just ‘being’ and being shut down; a difference between running mindfully and running away; a difference between staring at the walls and looking at them. I’m inclined to let you guess where I’m at, but maybe that’s just tonight. Maybe things will be different in the morning. It is Monday after all.
Hope your Monday is a great one.
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Sunday 16th January, 2011 at 03:33 am
I’ve been off-line for a few days. It was unexpected and very annoying; our BT Broadband connection disappeared as mysteriously as it came back, more than 48 hours later. As a result my on-line ‘jobs’ are a little behind, including updating my Draw365 gallery. But I thought I could still show you my favourite sketch of the week. I’ve been looking at the sycamore tree outside my kitchen window each day. Sometimes I look and think nothing’s changed: the silhouette is exactly the same. Everything around it does change though – the weather, the light… And of course my focus changes. Sometimes I want to look close at the way the branches twist about and other times I’m just interested in the fleeting shapes moving in the wind. The sketches I’ve made this week are brief and small (in an A5 sketchbook). The plan for the coming week is to get some larger paper and spend some time really looking, I think I might get a more interesting drawing that way. This week’s efforts are preliminary sketches – the best is yet to come!
 Windy day (pastel on paper) I’d also like to share some of my favourite drawings other Draw365 artists have added to the Flickr gallery this week. I love these particular ones for lots of reasons – the marks, the subject matter, the different media. They’re all inspiring, don’t you think? (Follow the links below to see each image at a larger scale – it’s well worth it!)
Left to right and top to bottom:
- iPad drawing 43 – I See Visions – Alison Jardine
- Dag 015 : 15-01-2011 – Dennis Happé
- Parking lot in Long Island and crooked pencil – Nik Ira
- My Art Journal 2010-12-01 #155 – Peter Seelig
Hopefully my broadband trifles have been remedied now and I’ll be able to get back on track over the next day or two, so I’ll be back again to bother you soon!
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Saturday 8th January, 2011 at 15:50 pm
Do you remember that I decided to take part in #draw365, a drawing a day for a year? You do? Good! Well I thought I’d show you my favourite drawing or sketch of the week, one for each week of the year.
At the end of this first week I feel like I’m still ‘loosening up’ and finding my way. I’ve got no particular theme or subject matter in mind at the moment, but this week’s sketches have all been from observation: self-portraits, my cat and a view through my kitchen window. It’s this particular drawing that’s my favourite at the end of week 1. It was a very quick sketch and I like the simplicity of the marks and colours. The bright Eleagnus pungens was like a wonderful light on a dull grey day and I think this sketch captures that feeling well. It’s not strong on detail, but I think it’s strong on atmosphere, which for me is one of the most important things to get right in any drawing really. I want to draw this tree properly – make some studies of it. I love its shape in winter and just recently the starlings have been using it to roost in at dusk. I find myself standing there watching them for ages. Hmmm, that’s given me an idea. Maybe next week’s one a day could be a drawing of the tree each day? We shall see…
 Grey Day 2011 Did you realise that I’ve put a gallery of my one a day drawings on this blog? It’s on the ‘art’ page: if you hover over ‘art’ in the menu at the top of the page, you’ll see Draw 365 in the drop down menu, click on that to get to it. I’ve been updating it daily, so you’ll always find something new here. Go and take a look and let me know which drawing was your favourite this week!
Check out the Flickr group to see the gallery of everyone’s drawings, some lovely work there!
Hope you’re having a great weekend! Now where did I put my sketchbook…
love Stephie x
|
Narrative Self in pictures
|
I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why.
|
Latest comments