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 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
By Stephie, on Sunday 7th March, 2010 at 15:20 pm
Well, back on the drawing thing again. Several people, no not just the one, have suggested that I make myself look like my grandmother in my drawings. I take that to mean that I make myself look 30 years older, whereas in reality I’m told I look ten years younger  (It’s true!). I’ve thought about this and wondered why. I try to draw what I feel like, rather than what I look like, so maybe I feel two generations older? Er, no, I definitely don’t feel like I belong to my mother’s mother’s generation. Maybe it’s just what the depression looks like. Not good. Anyway, I decided to take some photos as I worked on a drawing, to see if there was any point in particular I become ‘old’! I think maybe I just start that way – what do you think?
 Just before I started drawing - really do I look that old?!
 Stage 1, just scribbling to get a feel for the paper
 Stage 2, not looking too old yet?  Stage 3, er no...
 Stage 4? Seriously, get rid of it  Stage 5, try again - getting older yet?
 Stage 6 - obliterate it (and me) completely
 Stage 7 - getting older...  Stage 8, oh god just look at it  Stage 9? Right that's it, I'm bored with this now. It didn't go the way I wanted; it went lots of different ways, none of them the right way. Meh. Trying hard to suppress urges to bin this one. Just before I started drawing - really do I look that old?! Any resemblance between the last drawing and the photo then, I don’t know! Does it matter if I look 50 years older in the drawing? You can of course leave me your honest comments!
#draw365 – see the group’s drawings here
My Gallery – see all my drawings for the 365 project here
By Stephie, on Thursday 25th February, 2010 at 22:42 pm
At last here are some drawings I’ve made over the last few days or s0. Well, I say drawings, they’re sketches really, nothing more. What do you think?
 I did these ones a couple of weeks ago now. They're in ink and chalk and are pretty naff if you ask me, ha, ha!! Probably took all of 5 minutes. (A5 sketchbook)  Ink in an A6 sketchbook.  Erm, and another A6 sketch  And here's another one  Oh and another...  and yet another one - are you bored yet?  How about this for a bit of light relief then?  She likes a wash does Lily! #draw365 – see the group’s drawings here
My Gallery – see all my drawings for the 365 project here
By Stephie, on Tuesday 9th February, 2010 at 23:41 pm
Well, here’s the drawing I started the day before yesterday. And here it is from last night. This is it. Finished. I don’t know whether I should have left it at stage 1 (see post #draw365 – post 13) or not. I think at this stage it’s a better drawing, but I quite liked the atmosphere I’d created at stage 1. Oh well, you take a decision you have to live with it. And I’m happy with the decision I made. For once!
 This is the final stage of the self-portrait I showed you yesterday in post 13  Showing you a bit more detail
 And another detail! #draw365 – see the group’s drawings here
My Gallery – see all my drawings for the 365 project here
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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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