Lesson errr...

I have no idea what 'lesson' number I'm up to. And I did these a little while ago anyway - almost two weeks ago, I mentioned I'd been sketching purple animals - well here they are. I wasn't going to post them, being rough sketches to see if I could get animal shapes vaguely correct but *shrugs* I've been too lame for words and haven't posted anything painty or draw-y or bead-y for ages (because I haven't done anything!) so this is my penance!

They were very quick, very rough sketches from photos. My personal favourite is the lion cub - although thats actually the one that looks least like to photo I was working from (in that the the original was erm... a kitten. But all kittens think they're lions anyway!). There's a multitude of flaws which I shan't bother to list - what I take from this is that yes, I can in fact learn to draw and indeed am doing so. I couldn't have done these two months ago.

Skiving! With purple unicorns!

Hokey cokey... I've been OK today. Still rather tired but I think thats the beginning of a cold taking hold, I felt decidedly ill last night and first thing this morning. Which was unfortunate given that it meant I forgot my dentist appointment until they rang with a 'Mrs Hall... you were supposed to be here five minutes ago'. Ooops.

Nonetheless I've been good and (mostly) worked today. Then Geoff and co went off to geekland and left me with the Evil Small Children who were on the whole OK. Finn did require my pretty much constant presence until he went to sleep but was happy with me reading in there with him. And Cam both let geoff leave and went to bed with no complaints which is nothing short of miraculous.

Then I escaped and skived off for a couple of hours. Technically I should have been doing stocktaking, in practise I've been sketching purple animals. And a unicorn. Just to practise drawing shapes accurately more than anything. I did have to find a clear picture of a horse's head to check what kind of nose they have. Flared nostrils. Got it now. Thought the bear nose didn't look quite right on my unicorn... I'm improving. Still not great though I need to be much better. I can't draw all the cool things in my head till I'm better at it.

Other than that... things are boring. My sister STILL hasn't had the bloody baby. I wish she'd get a move on so I can relax and not be permanently ready to drive down the M4. Bitch woke me at 3am to come down when she had the last one. That was fun....
Darren turns 16 on Thursday (eeep!) and should be starting to work for me next week as week (its a long story... but I get cheap labour, he gets bribed to actually pass his GCSEs.... because he's damn clever but damn lazy and so disillusioned with school its unreal). Jay's friend's parents came round to complain about prank phonecalls at 2am on Sunday morning *sigh* and Geoff goes back to work on what looks like Monday (coincidentally the same day as my mother - another blinking physicist contractor - goes back to her old workplace). Nothing has made me laugh all day which is a little sad.

And I'm now bored. Geoff's been out all evening and I definitely prefer having someone around to mutter at. I'm not tired (plus I'd quite like to still be awake when Geoff gets back)

Still reasonably content...

... although possibly slightly cranky because my shoulder has gone again - I pulled a tendon or something in my neck a week ago and I thought it had healed but stretched it a little too sharply this morning and I'm once again in agony and unable to use it without severe pain. Possibly hauling 20kg boxes of beads around yesterday didn't entirely help matters either. Sadly that limits my drawing and painting - and computer use - typing isn't a problem but using a mouse IS. Possibly I should get Geoff to swap my tower and printer round so I don't actually have to stretch for my mouse.

Either way, given pain and inability what I was drawing has been temporarily abandoned and instead I'm busy printing off all the squillions of reference photos I have and organising them into files. Which will give the advantage of not needing me to be tied to my PC when I'm drawing because there little display folders are portable :-). I was busy doing both Bry's and Jans stuff but Bry's is at the stage where I can't go any further without masking fluid (I'm working in watercolour) and Jan's needs large amounts of sketching-planning done which hurts my shoulder if I do it for more than a few minutes.

While there's numerous other things need doing I'm having real difficulty coming up with anything that isn't going to further damage me. Even reading strains is which is a total bitch because I'm kind of left with plonking my arse down in front of the TV which I rarely do and have no wish to do. Given everything, reading is possibly my best bet, especially as I'm currently at home alone with mini bratling - Geoff and the middle two kids have gone over to Andy & Alvery's to see the kids and play some games and Darren's off out with a pack of teenagers. Sleep sounds kind of tempting - I deliberately woke up at 4am to get some drawing time in undisturbed by kids or husband so I'm kinda tired, but obviously not an option with the small snotty one running around.

So yeah, enjoying the time off work even if it does make me feel guilty, but kinda bored on account of not being able to do anything. Ho hum...

Lesson 5 - Colour Pencils

OK its not the greatest work of art ever, and I'm not quite exhibition quality but I like it :p

As mentioned in my last post, I tried drawing a castle (Conwy Castle to be precise) which was working rather well until I tried adding a girl in the forground using colour pencils. And discovered that colour pencils are not as intuitive as one might think. So I read a book on drawing with them (thanks Geoff! x) and followed a very simple exercise on getting the feel for colour, shading and hatching with coloured pencils - the suggested idea was completely abstract - just a sheet divided into different shapes and forms shades in in a variety of colours but I didn't feel like abstract to I've given them a recognisable form. The colour is more accurate on the one without the frame mount (its scanned - the mounted one is photographed)






I like colour pencils. They're bright and fun and don't need any set up or cleaning up after. So for now I'm going to continue trying with them (and watercolour pencils - which to be fair, said book concentrates on heavily).

Bah humbug!

It would appear that Christmas is not happening this year due to large amount of internet-ordered christmas pressies having not yet arrived (including darren's main present). So christmas is cancelled and its coal for the stockings.

On a lighter note, I've now STOPPED selling, today is my last day of mailing anything and as of this afternoon I'm officially On Holiday. Woohoo! Given that I haven't had a day off ( at all - I work weekends too) since June its really rather needed.

On the arty stuff side I've spent the last few days doing a coloured pencil exercise after a disastrous attempt to draw a girl in the forground of a castle with coloured pencil (the graphite castle kicks arse. The girl was incredibly poor). So I read a colour pencil techniques book and spent some time getting the 'feel' of coloured pencils with a pretty pretty picture which I shall post at some point soonish.

My mother in law took me birthday shopping to hobbycraft on wednesday which was cool. I am now the proud owner of some posh colour watercolour pencils, some very nice quality watercolour and sketch pads and a bloody great big portfolio carry thing in which to keep stuff.

On the subject of my birthday it turned out I wasn't forgotton after all. I got some cool stuff including a book on woodcarving and a miniature grinder set from my sister (plus a fluffy Tinkerbell fleece blanket!), a beautiful set of watercolour paints from Geoff, an easel from the big kids and oil paints from the wee ones among other stuff. And Jan got me the most amazing book on painting watercolour fairies which I'm desperate to try out once I get a few hours and some inspiration.

Fickle as a flutterbye!

Me that is! I've been busy for the last couple of days creating a shiny new website to showcase and sell my jewellery and provide an artsy backgroundess to it all. Artsy backgroundess including a getting to know the artist bit - which this blog will be imported into (hence locking anything I really don't want visible to potential customers to LJ friends). Its coming along nicely, Ive got the structure almost done, the design is looking good and a load of products are written and in place. Its not online yet - I need my card processing details to be resent to me before I can add them to the site but its coming along nicely.

However 10 minutes ago my birthday pressies from georgie arrived :o) So I have a shiny new how-to-draw-fairies book and the Drawing for Dummies book here and a need to sit and work through the ENTIRE drawing for dummies book with pencil and sketchpad. So at least for a while I'm going to leave my website creation in order to play. I'll probably spend the day alternating both.

Its perked me up a little though. While I've been working fine its been in a very 'normal' manner. I read something about omega three being beneficial to bipolars so I've been eating a little peppered mackeral every day and it does seem to be working. I'm not falling asleep whilst doing monotonous work and I'm not being utterly manic about my new site (or my new books - its the weekend, I'm allowed to play!)

But on Monday I reach the grand old age of 32 and I'm not a huge fan of birthdays, possibly just because having a birthday a week before Christmas really sucks. Apart from Georgie's books I have two presents to open on Monday - I know Geoff had one arive in yesterday's mail plus Jan dropped on in last night which was a welcome and very sweet surprise from him. I wanted to open it then and I think he'd have liked me too but presents being in such short supply I thought I'd save it. There will undoubtedly be more but everyone is so frantically busy organising Christmas that I tend to get forgotton until they're dropping / mailing christmas stuff. Geoff is broke so I don't blame him in the slightest for not managing my birthday but *sighs* it would be nice to have some exciting new things to play with.

The other thing that has been stressing me out is work. eBay customers are SO impatient this close to Christmas - and of course mail can be severely delayed - which adds up to a whole lot of annoyance.

I might get some sleep before doing anything - I was up early with Finn this morning and had fairly horrific nightmares through most of last night (its the stress!) and while I did try going back to bed at 9am when Geoff woke up, it lasted all of an hour before arguing children disturbed me.

Lesson 4: A Whole Head!

Firstly... I want to explain something about how my brain works. If I think about doing things - I mean really think, do them in my mind - it has pretty much the same effect as practising. Hence my assertation that I'm pretty sure I could silversmith without too many problems - because while never having touched a soldering torch, I've read a lot, I understand the concepts, and the behaviour of metal and I've 'done it in my mind'. This always prompts looks (or types) of disbelief if I say it but its true.

The same applies to drawing. Before lesson 1 I hadn't drawn anything in over 5 years other than evil cat pic. And before that, when I was occasionally drawing I was awful. But I drew evil cat pic, thought I'd like to learn to draw, read some stuff and started *thinking* about it. Everything bar a cube and a cylinder that I've drawn in the last week has been detailed in my journal. So I'm not practising lots, but I AM thinking about it lots. Hence getting from not-very-good cat pic to quite reasonable portrait in a week.

OK portrait... this 'lesson' had a number of aims. Firstly to try and train myself to use more than two shades of grey when drawing! Secondly to get over my stupid statement that I can't draw noses or lips. If you can draw one thing OK you should be able to draw anything OK using the same basic techniques. And thirdly it was an excercise in drawing from sight - I used a googled photo of a girl to work from. And greyscaled it to help get to grips with the different shades of grey.

I think I managed aims 1 and 2 OK although because I once again couldn't be arsed to go upstairs and scan, the picture looks lighter at the bottom than the top. Aim 3 is a different matter. It is a reasonable drawing considering, but doesn't look especially like the model I drew. But that will come with time.

Its also highlighted that I could do with reading some hair tutorials. The picture was a close up of her face so there wasn't much of her hair to work from. The hairline was entirely made up because her photo cut off before the hairline. But I'm quite pleased with it.





And this is the same picture when I'd done the structure and just started filling in detail

Lesson 3: Eyes and eyes and eyes all over....

This evening, I've tried to teach myself to draw eyes. 2 and a half pairs of.

The first one came out best overall I think but they're not aligned properly, the second pair ARE properly aligned but the irises don't match properly (plus the model was at a weird angle so one of her eyes had eyelashes pointing up and one eye had them pointing down. Which looks kind of weird without the rest of the face to explain it). And no, I can't do the rest of the face. I can do the eyes. A vague symbolic attempt at eyebrows. And thats it. Eventually I hope to have enough body parts in my repetoire to build an Entire Person however at the minute I can do a person with eyes, one finger and a thumb.

The third one was a quick 60 second attempt at 'value' drawing - ie drawing the image using tones to define rather than starting with a line drawing and shading in. Its very distinct from line drawing with shading and produces a different effect. Apparently. Either way the single eye was just to see if I'd grasped the idea properly. What I gleaned from that little exercise was that I really need toget a pencil which produces darker tones (I only have a standard HB pencil. I'm not allowed to go buy a range. Or some decent paper :p)

I did try drawing a rose this morning. It sucked. At least in part I think coz I used a fakey fabric rose as a model so didn't have the proper plant structure and texture to work from. So thats at the bottom but is a bit rubbish.

First set of eyes



Second set of eyes and single eye (underneath)



And a really awful rose

Lesson Number Two

OK... so strictly speaking I should be working my backside off at this time of year. I'm working certainly but really not to the extent I should be. Although I'm trying harder. But I'm also very aware of the danger of getting completely overwhelmed by Christmas sales because I've had mass stress and depression every December for the last 4 years. So I'm consciously keeping myself doing 'normal' things like the drawing. Not that thats normal in itself but I'm doing it in a normal way. Anyone who knows me is aware of my frightening tendancy to throw myself completely into any new interest to the exclusion of life, the universe and everything. I'm deliberately keeping the drawing down to a couple of hours a day (a lot of which is reading, not drawing).

So yesterdays exercise was to try looking at outlines as a series of interconnected angles which can then be smoothed out, the idea being accurate shape reproduction and as yesterday, training myself to see what is really there. I then added the shading/shadowing stuff from my first lesson (when I say 'lesson' what I mean is what I gleaned from an hours reading and rereading of various tutorials condensed down to what I felt comfortable trying. I also read a lot on shape form, head construction and drawing roses yesterday. But settled for the basic angles practise with my thumb (because its a multiple angle shape and, well, it was there). Ignore the pen, its a leftover on the same sheet from lesson 1!

Eventually I'll manage something interesting. But I want to do this properly and slowly and really focus on the techniques a little at a time.

Drawing 101

OK as noted previously, I've always been vaguely disappointed that I can't draw or paint. But having put a little thought into it, I'm sure I could learn. So Step One in Stephie's Learn to Draw project came last night. I spent about half an hour flicking through how-to for beginners articles on about.com last night before doing a very simple exercise at 1am - the 'pick something random but simple and draw it' exercise. The point being to focus on seeing what something really looks like (because your brain compensates for things like perspective and shadowing - try doing the optical illusions app on facebook!) and developing hand-eye co-ordination. And 10 mintes later I'd produced a reasonable facsimile of my pen. Its not perfect my any means, its fatter than the actual pen, the point where it joins stem to nub isn't quite right and the tapering is out - its wider at the further away end making it look flat, when it should be getting ever so slightly narrower towards that end - but as my first attempt since probaby 2nd year high school at drawing an object from sight I'm still reasonably pleased with it (and for those who did high school with me - do you remember drawing the cheeseplant in art? Or the one where we had to do a self portrait half human, half machine?)

Either way I figure with regular practise I could become OK. Then its fairy time! I wonder if I own a sketchbook... Tesco Value printer paper perhaps not the best surface.

Do-Over

I suppose I'd better do a proper introduction post. I almost feel like I'm starting over with this journal - realistically, opal work is not something I have the time or the equipment to do at present, so for the time being it's being shelved.

I’m Steph Hall, 30-something years old and I made my first piece of real jewellery when I was 17. I so wish someone had introduced me earlier! The short bout of metal work we did in school would have been so much more interesting if it had been jewellery focused and 3 years of secondary school art classes would have been far less excruciating if someone had explained you don’t need to be able to draw to be an artist. Because I can’t draw for toffee. I totally suck. I still enjoy it on occasion but my 12 year old son is significantly more talented than I!

!Artist.... Am I pretentious? Of course I am. I call my work 'art', my workshop a 'studio' and see 'inspiration' everywhere :p I'll get around to putting up a 'gallery' soon to 'showcase' my 'portfolio' as well. I've even got my very own fashionable mental illness to explain away my 'eccenticities'*. Just be thankful I'm not churning out crap poetry anymore!

*As an aside I did try getting my husband and best friend to refer my wierdness as 'endearingly quirky'. Their responses were 'Nucking Futs is more like it' and 'No, you're completely insane' respectively. I love them :o)

Jewellery making first came about because my parents decided their latest get-rich-quick scheme (or at least earn some extra cash scheme!) was to be making jewellery. So armed with plated wire, a pair of round nose pliers and semi-precious beads I set about making jewellery which went into local shops, libraries and such for sale. It stayed interesting for a while but I was significantly ‘handicapped’ by my parents’ cost awareness. If I used a bead too many or tried something a little too ornate it was too expensive to make. Eventually, my mum left and the jewellery making died and it was a good 13 years before I picked up a pair of pliers again.

Can't Paint...

Can't Draw...

Can Sew a Little...

In the interim I’ve flirted with a lot of crafts. I became reasonably good at my style of digital art & modelling, painted (badly!) and wrote a lot of poor short stories and poetry. I’ve also done a reasonable amount of sewing. For a while I had a stepdaughter for whom I enjoyed making pretty-girly dresses (I had two sons then – I’ve since had two more so there’s a lack of girlyness in our home!). I’ve also done a reasonable amount of costume making for amateur dramatics (I always particularly enjoyed panto and have performed in a number of shows – always with my hands firmly dug into the costume and makeup design as well). I also spent three years designing and selling ballgowns before selling off the business due to a lack of space.

Finding my Mediums
Digital Art	Ballgown Design	Wire Jewellery

So through a very roundabout route, I ended up selling jewellery, beads and jewellery findings for a living. It started when I thought it might be nice to try making jewellery again and I discovered I enjoyed it. I do seem to have ‘caught’ the cost awareness aspect from the parents however instead of limiting myself, I made a business from selling the components needed to make jewellery and have established a lot of wholesale and manufacturing contacts around the world. So I use whatever I feel like using for a piece – I just buy at very low prices in bulk! Its not unusual for me to buy 1000+ identical beads because they gave me an idea for a necklace. I just sell off the excess – which fortunately I’m quite good at - my ebay shop pays the mortgage and the bills so its reasonably important!

Colour is my main motivator. I find inspiration in all manner of things – from art to nature to people but what I see will always be related to the colours I can use in a piece. I’ve zero interest in the very intricate and beautiful art of chain maille – I can appreciate it as an art form but it doesn’t hold the allure of working with colour for me. I frequently look at other artists’ jewellery and sites – not to copy, I’ve never replicated anything in my life – but because their beauty stimulates my creativity – sometimes I look at the same styles as I make, sometimes I’ll browse through sites showcasing the wonderful art of glass beadmaking or polymer clay, or silver & goldsmithing none of which I’ve ever tried and all of which I’d love to be able to do and I do of coursed have my own favourite artists whose work I will never tire of looking at. Alas, I’ve had to put measures into place to severely restrict myself – I’m quite bad for getting worked up about something new, spending way too much money on it and finding myself without the time to work at it.

Jewellery is exciting. There are so many methods and techniques that I’ll never get through them all, and if I start to even consider it my mind takes off on wild flights through my imagination so I do try and keep myself grounded to one or two things at a time simply because I’d never get anything done otherwise!


And the point of this... *shrugs* do blogs need a point? Its a visual and literal diary & scrapbook of my play-time :p