Artsy Fun

Drawing and Listening

I spend a lovely part of Sunday afternoon drawing while I was listening to the audiobook Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia.

I highly recommend both.

Two drawings in a sketchbook, one of overlapping geometric shapes one of three mushrooms on a hill.
Image description: two drawings on a sketchbook page. The top one is a bunch of overlapping, patterned geometric shapes in a variety of colours against a green background. The bottom is three toadstools/mushrooms, one gold with a pink stem, one silver with a black stem and one black with a gold stem, all with circular or semi-circular patterns on their caps and stems. They are growing from a patterned green hill with blue sky in the background.

Thumbnail Drawings

I took a fantastic workshop today about writing and illustrating micro fiction and I got a lot of things out of it (more on that in a future post.)

One of the key things I learned was that I was conflating the idea of sketches and thumbnails.

Thumbnail drawings are a series of tiny drawings that have little to no detail, just an idea of objects and composition.

Sketches are a draft version of your final drawing that expand on one of your thumbnails.

This may be old news to everyone else but, all along, I was thinking of a sketch as the brainstorming stage, as the earliest visual.

The fact that there is a even more preliminary stage of drawing is marvellously helpful to me.

Here are a few of my thumbnail drawings from today:

A series of small drawings of scenes inspired by the ‘Mother Hubbard’ nursery rhyme.
Image description: thumbnail drawings of the ‘Mother Hubbard’ nursery rhyme. 6 small squares on white paper that depict an empty cupboard, a woman and a dog looking into an empty cupboard, a sad dog holding a bowl, a woman holding a dog in her lap,,a faint drawing of a woman saying ‘oh no’ while a dog lies at her feet and a dog on its hind legs carrying a hobo bundle on a stick.

Pieces of a story

On Friday, I took a really fun workshop on creating stories.

The workshop leader, N, had a huge pile of small items in a box and after putting us in pairs he asked us to select a few items to craft a story from.

My story-partner J and I were really on the same metaphorical page and we had a great time crafting our story.

What kind of story could you make from these objects?

a brown tabletop with a green notebook and a pencil on it. On top of the notebook is a metal stick figure with its hands in the air. Next to the notebook is an amber coloured phial, a little ways to the right is a small bouquet of tiny flowers and a metal key, to the right of that is a large rock and to the right of that is a broken white brooch
Image description: a brown tabletop with a green notebook and a pencil on it. On top of the notebook is a metal stick figure with its hands in the air. Next to the notebook is an amber coloured phial, a little ways to the right is a small bouquet of tiny flowers and a metal key, to the right of that is a large rock and to the right of that is a broken white brooch.

Surprised by my own drawing

I drew this yesterday.

Image description: a drawing of a bunch of half-oval shapes close together, a bit like multi-coloured kernels of corn on the cob but with one white ‘kernel’ with a smiling face and big eyes in the middle.

My plan was to make a bunch of faces, one on each shape.

But once I had coloured almost all the shapes, I couldn’t decide what colour to make that last white bump.

That’s when I realized that that was where the face was going to go, that it was a little creature peeking out of a hiding spot, not a bunch of faces at all.

Weird, hey?

Unexpectedly Popular Monster

When I created Shari, I felt like I was kind of copping out with the advice.

Not only did what I had written on the drawing feel trite, I felt like the additional advice in my post was a bit ordinary, maybe even too obvious.

Here’s what I said:

By the way, when Shari says to lean into your own style and do your own thing, she’s not just talking about what you wear.

Do the things you love to do and do them in the way you love doing them.

Maximize your daily fun!

Image description: a drawing of a green slug-like monster that is green on top (with pink dots along her uppermost edge) and black and white striped underneath. She has a big eye on this side, and two pink teeth and antennae. She has a thought bubble above her that reads ‘It’s ok. Do your own thing!’ And text above that reads ‘Shari wants you to lean into your own style!’

I wasn’t expecting people to like it or, at least, I didn’t expect them to engage with it.

But I had multiple comments on it and people told me it was what they needed to hear.

Obviously, the saying ‘you are too close to your own work to judge it’ is very true.