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
By Stephie, on Sunday 2nd January, 2011 at 03:37 am
I was so lucky to be given a box of wonderful soft chalks for Christmas. They’re my favourite sort, crumbly and sensual. When you rub them between your fingers they feel really silky and you know they’ll just glide across the paper. Even the box they come in is gorgeous, all dark and promising. You lift off the lid and nestled inside, protected, cosseted, are 18 sticks of intense colour that will be as pleasurable to use as they are to look at. I decided to christen them in the first minutes of New Year’s Day.
 First self-portrait of 2011  Detail My first creative act of 2011. A fair start I think. What’ve you been up to? I’d love to know!
Stephie x
By Stephie, on Monday 3rd May, 2010 at 23:28 pm
I was out for a walk with a friend recently and came across 4 dead rooks. Poisoned I suspect. I mean, how often would you find that many in one place without a mark on them? They nest high up in a group of pine trees along the edge of a recreation ground; I love the sound of their chattering. Why anyone would want to poison them I can’t imagine, although another walker suggested maybe strychnine had been put down for moles, which she assuredly told us were destroying lawns all over the village (yawn). Strychnine poisoning is a hideous way to die, but she didn’t seem at all bothered and said that there were “too many crows anyway”. I was speechless. Still, one rook’s demise is another woman’s opportunity, and obviously I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pick one up on my way back from our walk. I left the poor thing in a carrier bag in the garden and forgot about it for almost a week. I came across it again today hidden away outside the kitchen door.
It’s still looking pretty good even if it is a bit rank now. The sun was shining so I sat outside and did a couple of sketches; I wasn’t that pleased with my efforts, but I did keep this one. He’s now safely back in the bag until next time. I’m going to keep him for a while and hope that he’ll decay enough that I can keep the skeleton. Sorry, am I putting you off your dinner?! Next time I do some drawings I’ll just show you them without all the rabbiting on!
 Rook
By Stephie, on Saturday 1st May, 2010 at 09:25 am
I took my robins out of the freezer last night and made a few sketches, so thought I’d show you. Simple studies, nothing more.
 Pencil and watercolour, approximately A5  Pencil and watercolour, approximately A5 I’ve added these to the #draw365 Flickr group this morning too. There are so many great drawings in the group now, thousands!
By Stephie, on Friday 30th April, 2010 at 22:39 pm
I think it’s official: I’m anxious. It’s not the diagnosis of IBS that makes it official though. No, it’s the sewing of Christmas presents. Yes that’s right, Christmas presents. The urge to finish some things I began in December is overwhelming. And just in case you were thinking that maybe I finally have the urge to finish the star quilt for Kim (that I intended to finish in December 09), I should clarify that it’s the Christmas presents I intend to give this year that I feel compelled to complete. When I start to do things like this I realise I’m going into panic mode. Everything seems out of control and I need to get a handle on it somehow. Bizarrely, it seems to me that making things way ahead of time will help me gain control. I have this feeling that if I don’t do it now it’ll be too late. My CPN has called it a coping mechanism. Whatever.
I feel powerless in many areas of life at the moment. Finances is one. A big one that I won’t bore you with. Weight is another. Yep, I’ve heard it all before: you look great; you don’t look any different; you can’t weight that much… But the fact is, that over the last few months that I’ve been on a new medication I’ve gained weight. And for me this is not good. I can barely ever put anything in my mouth without doing a quick add up of how many calories I’ve eaten that day. It just wears you down. It’s like having contradictory voices in your head all the time: being on this medication has improved your mood swings, a bit of extra weight is an ok price to pay for that/you’re totally crap, you can’t even control your own weight and if you hadn’t lost the plot in the first place you wouldn’t need to be on the stupid medication (this voice wins hands down). And so it goes on.
I also have this major anxiety that I’m wasting time and wasting my life doing unimportant things, like making Christmas presents in April for a start. Yet I can’t focus. Recently I seem to keep thinking about The Future. How the hell am I going to make a living and support Kim and me? What can I do – work in an office all day? No way, that helped send me over the edge last time. Make ‘stuff’, make art to sell? Well who the hell can afford to buy it, and who the hell would want to anyway. My only option is self-employment, and it will have to be arts and crafts (I can’t do anything else!): I have irregular sleep patterns; my moods change like the wind (cowboy!); it’s the only way I can see to be creative – being self-employed would accommodate these things. But I have no money to invest in materials, let alone machinery, marketing and everything else that goes with it. And honestly, do I sound clear headed enough to start anything anyway?
Oh and then there’s Kim. We’re having meal time and bed time battles. When he’s not wearing me down, he’s winning.
…
Since I began writing this post, at about 2am this morning, my anxiety levels have gone up and off the scale. My car has failed its MOT  and it will cost more to repair than I have and more than I can access. I know that running a car is the reason I’m in debt in the first place, should I make that worse by trying to keep it going, or should I beg, steal and borrow to get it sorted, sell it and pay off what I owe? If I do that we’ll be fairly isolated. The nearest ‘mini supermarket’ is three miles away; the nearest Tesco is 6 miles away. Most of our friends live in villages 7+ miles away off the regular bus routes. I have to travel to health appointments that are 12 miles away and 7 miles away. It seems virtually impossible to live without a car and impossible to live with one. How do people get by in these situations? I really don’t know, I feel at a complete loss. All I know is that I feel trapped in near poverty with no prospects, all due to stupid mental ill health.
If I thought things were bad yesterday because I was making Christmas presents, today must be really rough: I’ve got the dead robins out of the freezer and have been drawing and painting.
By Stephie, on Monday 26th April, 2010 at 11:30 am
Dunno about you, but I’m still here rocking my own little world ;D
As you know if you read this blog on a regular basis, I do sometimes talk about my breasts. I call them that, ‘cos somehow I don’t think they’re big enough to qualify as boobs; maybe it’s the double ‘o’ in the word itself that makes me feel that. Maybe I’ve got bobs! Still, it amuses me no end that small and cute as they are (trust me on that one!) they can still create controversy. Shall I tell ‘e why? Be prepared to be shocked. Sit ye down and I shall reveal all…
I DO NOT WEAR A BRA
 Bobs! It’s ok, you can pick yourself up now. I cannot believe how many people are shocked by this (mostly women). In fact I was asked only yesterday “but don’t your nipples show?”. I lifted up my jumper and said “you tell me”. “Well actually, that’s quite a see-through t-shirt you’ve got on there”. Do I care? No I don’t, ‘cos funnily enough I think most of the human race have nipples. And I like mine almost as much as I like my legs (from the knees down you understand).
I remember at the tender age of about 15 my mother called me disgusting because I hadn’t put a bra in the laundry for weeks. I retorted “that’s ‘cos I don’t wear them”. I can still recall the look on her face today; it was so much more satisfying than rebelling by dying my hair pink. And at the age of forty-something my age I’m extremely pleased to report that my gorgeous bobs are still perky and not in need of any uncomfortable and rather pointless (excuse the pun) scaffolding. So if you’re ever lucky enough to see me flash my t-shirt (summer’s on it’s way), be prepared and bring your smelling salts.
How did you survive Boobquake day?
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I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why.
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