Category: creativity

I couldn’t walk past a trio of sunflowers while out shopping for essential groceries. The bright yellow drew my eye and I whisked the sunflowers from the bucket and into my basket without a second of hesitation.

I new the moment I saw their pretty faces that I wanted to draw them and paint them with watercolour. And here they are. 

I spent all day sitting on the veranda sketching these beauties into my watercolour visual diary and the rest of the day painting them in an attempt to capture the life of they beamed at me.

It was a day of pure creative happiness. Blissful time spent drawing and painting without worrying about anything at all.

I did several other drawings/watercolour paintings of my sunflowers. They were too beautiful not to capture them from various angles.

Earlier in the week, I played around with more black ink and watercolour to create this beautiful King Protea. Unfortunately, while I was outside sketching it something small and green fell on the page.

I thought it was a seed pod from the over hanging tree. When I brushed it off the page it squished a small insect creature into the paper and so this one is very close to nature.

I’m so sorry little nature bug – I didn’t mean to turn you in to art collage in my visual diary!

It was so delightful to see this flower evolve on my page. I do love it.

My arty lifestyle has been developing each day and each time I draw. I’m still doing my 100 portrait challenge but needed some time out to focus on drawing other subjects. Since my last post, this is the only portrait I’ve done.

This guy is from Sktchy app and he’s an artist too. A brave guy willing to allow others to draw him in the ‘all-together’. I did this one on Procreate (I’m still learning the program – it’ll take me my whole life time to figure it all out I think) and practiced foreshortening as well as anatomy drawing and getting a likeness.

Then it was on to drawing my partner’s motorbike. It’s his pride and joy, and he is so happy that the Government have allowed riders to go out on their bikes again. Although that’s for a test period to see if we can ease some restrictions and still reduce the amount of cases of COVID-19.

So I probably won’t see him much over the weekend as he’ll be hitting the road with this baby.

I drew his motorbike on my iPad with Procreate too. It’s my first go at drawing his motorbike. It seemed too complex for me at first but then as I slowed right down and focused on negative space and then just the shapes – circles, squares, curves etc – came together on the virtual page. I am very happy with this first go and am thinking of developing a series of drawings all about his motorbike. It could be fun and that’s what art is really about for me.

Now my arty eye has been draw to illustration and in particular how to create characters on the page using objects (as well as myself 🙂 ). I am having so much fun with this style of drawing and it is so freeing for the imagination.

First you start by drawing what you see and going for some accuracy. Check out my drawing pens.

Then you start to be playful with the pens and pencils, creating joyful characters of them.

Here’s a page from my A5 visual diary. On the left you’ll see my ‘Playful Pen’, then you can see how my imagination is starting to grasp the idea of turning pens and pencils into playful characters.  On the other page, I have more realistic drawings – my Lamy Pen and my watercolour pallet which I did from observation. Down in the bottom corner, I drew my own eye watching my drawing to show how much I was looking, looking, looking at what I was doing.

Lastly, I’m learning how to turn myself into a character. Here’s me showing my art and writing to my fan base – my fur-babies, Jack, Rocket and Miss Poppy.

This was soooo much fun. You can expect to see more doodles like this showing up on my blog as I keep playing around with ideas and documenting my daily life in fun ways.

Until next time, I hope you are staying safe and indulging yourself in a creative life. Creative expression, no matter what form it takes, helps you to come home to yourself and see yourself through the things you make.

Go get some ‘Big Magic’ like Elizabeth Gilbert talks about and just have fun!