Day forty of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Yesterday was one for the books. I don't even know where to start. And so I won't start.
But it felt fitting to draw something irreverent (in my mind) to distract from things.
So here's an illustrated rendering of a £2 peepshow neon sign from God's Own Junkyard. Another place I'd like to return to once lockdown has lifted.
Sketched with a 4H pencil, then traced over with an HB.
Day thirty-nine of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I finished drawing this just before midnight yesterday. But then I got engaged in another discussion about current affairs with one of my patrons and good friends, Chris.
Chris seems to have his sleeping patterns under better control than me now. We were previously exchanging messages about politics and current affairs at 4:00 most mornings. But it doesn't stop us from starting conversations about the deeper issues at midnight!
Meanwhile, today's sketch was inspired by a photo I took at Ongar Railway Station in Chipping Ongar, Essex, back in April 2019.
Simon and I caught the Real Ale Train on the Epping-Ongar Railway that day. Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy and, once the weather cleared a bit, I was feeling nauseous (not because of the cider!)
Consequently, I took literally one photograph with my DSLR and a small smattering of photos from the train with my iPhone.
I know they've been suffering because of all the lockdowns. To support them, and because of the issues on our last journey, I'd like to join the train another time soon. Once the lockdowns have eased. To enjoy the train trip, hop off and have a nose around Chipping Ongar, and then enjoy some cider properly on the way back.
Back to my sketch, though.
I started this sketch intending to capture the whole scene. I quickly realised my ability to condense this much image into an A4 page of sketching in square format was just not going to happen.
So for today's sketch, I settled for capturing the lamp post. And adding the roof of the building behind it.
The lamp post in my sketch looks like someone kicked a football at it. Rather than the perfectly vertical lamp post in the photo. And my perspective is off generally.
I suspect I would do better:
a) Using an A3 piece of paper, rather than A4.
b) Not using a notebook or any other drawing surface that creates a curve or has edges raised too much off the desk.
c) Using a larger space to draw in, rather than my overcluttered desk (though I do love having my plants by my side!)
I suspect there's also something to be said for using a surface that allows my eye line to be at the same point for looking at the source image and the image I'm drawing at the same time.
I'm trying to stick to what I have and the parameters I've set, though.
This was initially a 4H pencil sketch. As has become my wont. I accentuated it with an HB pencil outline. Then a heavier 4H pencil on the lightbulb and other elements.
Day thirty-eight of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Okay, honestly, if the title didn't give it away, would you see this sketch and think it's:
a) a scarecrow fashioned after a headless Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas
b) a crucifixion with extras
c) a plume moth
I wouldn't blame you if you picked anything other than a plume moth as I didn't even know what they were a few years ago.
But each year, I see at least one of the fellows, and they're kind of cute if a little wooden-looking.
My rendering is a little off, with his right wing a little too high up and his back legs a little less subtle than they should be.
He was sketched with a 4H. The darker points were drawn over with a 3B. And the outline accentuated with an HB before going over the lighter bits a little heavier with the 4H.
Managed to get this puppy... er, moth... sketched before midnight. But then got sidetracked in a What's App chat with Simon just after midnight on subjects as varied as the British monarchy, organised religion, kittehs, plants, and subordination vs loyalty. All the light stuff, eh?
One of the many reasons I love him. We have such varying conversations - from the frivolous to the intensely contentious - within a little over an hour. (Even if we're mostly coming from the same place with the more prickly subjects).
Day thirty-seven of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
How many of you are old enough to remember when the credits of a film shot in widescreen (16:9) were broadcast on the old television aspect ratio (4:3)? When they'd resize the frame to allow the credits to mostly be visible on the screen?
I'm guessing there's a few of you.
So, let's imagine that's what I did with my sketch today.
Clearly, that chair isn't proportionately as wide as it is in the original image. But I was trying to keep the width of the image within the page's edges.
I actually worked from a square version of the source image. I shot the source photo as a 1:1 square image and shared it previously on Instagram in that format. But my iPhone 11 Pro Max saves the original image in the full-frame ratio. So when I realised my sketch was portrait format, I could at least have a matching format photograph to pair with it to share.
There's also a bit of curvature on the left-hand side of the sketch. This is due to the page in my art journal curving when laid open. I held the left side of the journal up as I photographed my sketch. But clearly not enough to compensate for it and make the page appear flat.
Today's sketch was drawn with a 4H pencil.
I decided, in advance, I was going to shadow out the motel room interiors. But I did overlook the door handles and keys hanging from them when I sketched. Oops!
I corrected the bolts on the upper verandah coverage, but I'd drawn them a bit too heavy. So you can still see where I originally placed them too low down.
The door numbers are clearly not to scale (with each other or the doors).
There are some other inaccuracies in there (don't count them!) And the bricks were not drawn for realism but with artistic license.
Today was a bit of a write-off again for almost everything, but I'm trying to get my sleeping patterns back on track this week.
Day thirty-six of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Once again, I started my sketch after 23:30 yesterday. I finished a few minutes after midnight after a lazy, lazy day and a minuscule amount of work in the last stretch of the evening.
I picked this image I took at the Toora wind farm in November last year on my road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane with Simon because it seemed like something I could draw quickly. I was both right and wrong.
It's a passable sketch - I'm pretty sure you'd know what it was without the source image - but the top blade leans a little too hard to the left. And the right one is hanging too low and is a bit short compared to its counterpart on the left.
A satisfying attempt for me after what was a long week. I'll take it.
I'm hoping this week is a little gentler on me and on any of you struggling lately.
If you've not already had a listen, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' latest collaboration, Carnage, has been on heavy rotation here since Friday. I realised yesterday I wasn't following Cave's solo Spotify profile, so it wasn't served up to me on the day of release. Though I was following Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three, and, I think, Warren Ellis, so I'm still confused as to why it wasn't in my new release batch last week.
Oh, and Happy International Women's Day! I only found out today that many countries and some individual cities actually have a bank holiday to celebrate IWD!
In case you're missing it this year, some clever chappy archived Richard Herring's tweets from 2019. For those who don't know: Herring has done sterling work responding to the excessive number of tweets asking when International Men's Day is for the past eight years. You can send the archive link to twats as a "let me Google that for you" type of response if anyone you know needs to read it.
Day thirty-five of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I left my sketch until about 23:30 yesterday because I did some catching up on sleep and then worked for about six hours.
So I finished yesterday's drawing a few minutes after midnight today.
Full disclosure: I did correct the lean on this with a slight rotation when cropping in Photoshop. I'm not sure if that was in my photography or in the original drawing.
It didn't fix the general wonkiness of the guitar's neck and other elements, though.
Looking at it as I prepped it for posting, I was reminded of Tom Wait's The piano has been drinking (not me). I was sober when I started drawing, I swear! :)
I sketched this with a 4H pencil. Added shadows using a 6B, a 4B and a 2B. I went over some of the outline with an HB pencil and accentuated other spots with the 4H used heavier.
I wanted to visit Tamworth on previous road trips. But it's so far inland, and many people argue it's not a particularly interesting route.
Simon and I hadn't planned to visit Tamworth on our road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane in November 2019. We'd been planning to take a mostly coastal route with a detour into the Blue Mountains.
The bushfires had other ideas.
So I finally, after 42 years, with all but about 11 of them living in Australia, made it to Tamworth.
To be honest, we didn't see that much of the city as we were conscious we had a way to go to beat the bushfires to get to my uncle's place the next day.
As it was, during the first part of our road trip, the route via the New England Highway had been closed due to bushfires. We just managed to cut through in a period when it had reopened after the fires that devastated areas around Glen Innes and Tenterfield. While the bushfires were conveniently distracted by the enticing landscapes of Port Macquarie, where we had intended to stay in a caravan park cabin.
If the Devil had proposed a deal whereby I could visit Tamworth but, in exchange, large parts of Australia had to burn, that was a deal I would not have struck...
Day thirty-four of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
So, with all the positive outcomes and relief yesterday, today, with 2.5 days of filming left, the production Simon's working on was put on hold again. Because, of course.
He was due to be heading back to London on Monday, but now we don't know when he will be coming home :(
There's nothing either of us can do about it, but it sucks. Simon's return was so close I could smell it, even if I wouldn't have been able to smell him for another couple of weeks due to self-isolation requirements.
I had a tension headache all day today. I woke up with it, and it lurked about until I went out in the fresh cold evening air about 19:00.
Thankfully, apart from a half-hour training session this morning, I could reschedule my work hours to tomorrow and/or Sunday and just try to rest to shake it off.
As a consequence, I had more time this evening for my sketch. So, of course, I bit off more than I could chew... Though not my worst so far.
I decided early on that I wasn't going to even attempt all the fur. That the outline would do today.
I sketched out his little rat body with a 4H pencil. I drew his furry outline with a 4B. And I then went over the lines of his tail, feet, nose and the leaf with an HB pencil.
He lost a bit of weight in the drawing. And there are other imperfections, but it's not glaringly terrible like yesterday's attempt. It also appears I'm better at drawing rats than cats...
Day thirty-three of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
A third of the way through the project now!
Yesterday was a good day as three stressors that had been hanging over me were dealt with satisfactorily. After at least a week of feeling like I was being kicked while I was down, things finally felt like they were not working against me and taunting me.
Aside from the relief of that, Dad and I had a good chat before I went to bed far too late/early yesterday morning. It's hard being so far away. And knowing that, even if I could afford to travel, I can't visit him right now.
Our chat ended at about 05:00 my time.
I managed to attend a virtual training session this morning, as scheduled. But being self-employed meant I could crawl back into bed for a while without anyone knowing, caring or judging, before working in the evening and being in a better state to do so.
One of the stressors mentioned above involved me calling Australia during their business hours. As a consequence, I started my sketch at 23:45 yesterday. This was the first sketch during the project that took me into the next day.
If I'd had more time, I probably would have scrapped this and started over. The lines of the things under the wings ("Technical term". Are they the rear of engines? Feel free to enlighten me!) were completely wrong. I'm aware this was caused by the lines I drew on the wings themselves. I knew they were wrong as soon as I started drawing those cones (for lack of a better description) under the wing, but I essentially would have had to start over to fix them, and I just didn't have time.
I will give this one a second attempt (at least) because I feel like this was a massive fail.
Let's just say: I wouldn't fly in the aeroplane I drew!
The one saving grace is that you can probably identify the flying kangaroo if you didn't have the source image and wanted to figure out what I was aiming for.
Day thirty-two of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Yesterday was mostly positive but mostly busy, so still a bit exhausting.
I hit a wall at 18:00 after a virtual property inspection with our property manager. Thankfully, I managed to come back from it after a brief visit to the stupormarket for some essentials. Enough to get more hours clocked up for the day and get my sketch snuck in within the last half hour.
I'll be having a lie-in today, though I suspect it will end up being an equally busy day.
At least Simon and I got an hour of nattering in today. Which was a nice break from everything else.
So, with my small window of time for my sketch today, I picked something slightly humorous and simplistic.
The leaves aren't very realistic - they're almost cartoonish - but I think it works with the little yellow-ball-face thing.
I didn't know what to call him, so I decided to go with a puntastic title for today's sketch instead of the simple nouns I've been using for every other day so far. I almost went with 'self-portrait with leaves' because his expression is not dissimilar to the one on my face the past few days.
Today's sketch was all HB.
I do have more complicated or detailed subjects and images I want to attempt during this project. But, right now, time and energy isn't always something I have. I'm hoping to regain some of both of those things in the coming weeks, but we'll see.
If you have any suggestions or requests for sketches or subjects, feel free to let me know! You can comment on any post or email me, and I'll see what I can do!
Day thirty-one of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I feel like I phoned it in today, and it shows.
Just feeling tired and stressed and too much on my mind tonight after I finished my work for the day. And too much still to do before I rest tonight. And things to tackle tomorrow that are stressing me out more.
So I foolishly used a 6B for the darker tones on the top of the buds, not thinking ahead that it would leave me nowhere to go with the shadows around the buds. They had to be 5B instead, which I hadn't used before, so the lines are too harsh in the shadows.
I drew the outline initially with the 4H again. Created the darker pinks with the 6B. Went heavier over the bits in between with an HB, then added the shadows.
That's all she wrote.
Will do better tomorrow, hopefully.
Day thirty of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Today was fine, but I just feel a tired ache in my flesh and bones, all through my body.
I'm not getting sick. I think I'm possibly just trying to do too much, and my body is trying to tell me to chill the fuck out a little.
Today's sketch was brought to you by the alphanumeric 4H and the letters HB. I did the initial sketch in 4H again. I shaded the darker green areas with the HB. Then I went over the other outlines a little heavier with the 4H.
It just occurred to me that I only used the eraser once, maybe twice, on small spots. And even then, only to fix my slight overshooting of lines where leaves and flowers overlapped each other. Not because I felt I went glaringly off-course, as I was regularly doing at the beginning of the project.
Once again some imperfections but, without the source image, you'd likely not know. Though, without the source image, you'd probably not know what this was anyway! I know I wouldn't!
Day twenty-nine of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I sketched this early evening yesterday. I then spent the rest of the evening working on my latest love letter to London so that would go live for my Patreon patrons in February (just!)
I picked something not too difficult to draw because I knew I would be pushed to time. I'll attempt drawing this guy in full bloom at some point during the project.
I worked with a 4H pencil to get the sketch down then went over the outline of the stem and leaf with an HB pencil. I emphasised the flower head by going over the outer edges slightly more heavily with the 4H.
I mentioned on Friday that we have several "new" plants coming through this spring. I put new in quotation marks because, clearly, they've been there for a while, but they've had to fight to get through everything else. The work we did last year has suppressed the bulk of the weeds and grass.
This guy is one of them: our single, solitary daffodil.
He was pretty early in appearing but didn't beat the solitary orange snow crocus to bloom. And expire. Unfortunately, the crocus didn't last long. I wish we had a whole yard of them. They're really rather lovely.
According to my plant-identifying app, we also have some snowdrops growing. They've not yet flowered, so I have to trust the app on that.
There is a hyacinth (just the one so far), which is new this year and looks set to flower in short order.
The bearded iris I planted late last year - gifted to us from a neighbour - appear to be coming along nicely. I need to brush the soil back from their rhizomes to allow them to see the sun, though. I'm looking forward to them flowering as they will be blue and there's quite a few of them.
The hydrangea has new growth on it despite how ill it was treated by the weather over winter. I'm hoping the dahlias manage to come up again too, but I'm not hopeful.
My plant-identifying app also tells me there's some wild garlic sprouting. I'm super excited about that and hoping it's not an instance where it's wrong (it's variable in its reliability). I love smelling wild garlic in the cemeteries we visit. I didn't even know it was a thing until a few years ago... Om nom nom.
I'll try to share some "proper" (read: DSLR, not mobile) photos from the garden on my Patreon this week when I have a chance.
Day twenty-eight of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Okay, who had 'pigeon' on their 'A Sketchy Practice' bingo card? ;)
You know it had to happen...
His neck and body are a bit off in terms of angles and proportions. But it's a reasonable representation, I think.
My shading still leaves much to be desired. I really need to find some time to squeeze in watching tutorials about it and stop winging it (pardon the pun).
I drew the original sketch with a 4H pencil then used an HB pencil to go over the outline and shade in some of the colouring and darker lines on my feathered friend.
Day twenty-seven of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Yesterday was a good day:
I cleared some of my remaining working hours before going to bed.
I got paid.
I slept the sleep of the just.
I woke to the news that over-40s are next in line for the Coronavirus vaccine here in the UK. (For once, I'm thankful for being "older").
I nattered with Simon on the phone.
I tended our indoor plants.
I photographed plants in our front garden coming through with the warmer spring weather now that a lot of the weeds are suppressed.
I popped out to do essential shopping and caught some sunlight for my vitamin D fix.
I completed my working hours for the week.
I consumed some cheeky ciders (the first in days and about half were low-alcohol).
I completed my daily sketch.
Though I had this sketch finished by about 23:44 yesterday, editing the source photo and importing and editing my sketch took me into today. And then I got distracted by annoying political stuff counterbalanced by a more positive random chat with Simon about plants and insects.
I've learned even more new things (for me) today, and that's always a good thing!
So anyway, this little fella isn't a spider. So all you arachnophobes can just chill, okay?
He's a harvestman from the Opiliones order.
Simon and I befriended him in Theydon Plain, Epping, Essex, not far from Epping Forest on one of our first proper outings as restrictions eased toward the end of London's first lockdown.
I hope we didn't get him pissed...
That day was the first time in a long time that things felt "normal" because I'd shopped the day before for our picnic fare. Apart from having to throw our rubbish in an over-full bin on the way home, I'd not had to furiously sanitise my hands all day or keep my hands away from my face even.
It was late May last year, and it feels so long ago but simultaneously not that long ago.
So, anyway, yesterday, I knew I had a short window to complete my sketch after wrapping up some work for the day. Though it took me a while to decide what to draw, I eventually settled on this fellow.
He's drawn with a 4H pencil, and he's not necessarily proportionally perfect compared to the original photograph, but he's not bad. He does look a little more like a beetle than an arachnid, in my opinion, though. (Pros and cons for you arachnophobes).
I thought my name and sketch duration wording were a bit light, so they are more of a mess from me doing a terrible overwriting job!
I'm hoping I'll do my sketches during daylight hours over the weekend and that I'll be able to bring them to you earlier in the day.
Day twenty-six of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I snuck this little guy in with about twenty minutes left in the day so posting it late.
Yesterday was a mostly positive day, starting with a chat on Skype with Dad before some soup and telly, then bed.
Just as I was about to start work, I got a call from Simon. We were able to talk longer than the previous day, and he was able to send me some photos of the shooting location in Berlin.
Almost halfway through my planned working hours, I took a break to have a long-overdue catch-up call with a former co-worker. Though a lot of the discussion was negative in content (related to our shared workplace), it was a good call as she is always lovely to speak with. It was a pleasant way to break up my workday.
Today's sketch was a calming little flower on our spider plant from late last year. I drew it all in 4H and decided not to go over it with a heavier pencil.
I'm not sure I captured the three-dimensionality of the stamen. Especially as I shaded the tips pretty solidly without thinking about the variations on them, but it mostly seemed to flow okay today.
Day twenty-five of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Phewf! I'm a quarter of the way through this year's project!
This morning I woke to find our youngest avocado plant looking very much like Edvard Munch's The Scream of Nature as its leaves start to form on its hairy, little stem.
So I decided to draw him now that he's a bit more dynamic than he has been for the past few weeks.
I sketched him initially using a 4H pencil. I then shaded the darker patches and shadows with a 6B. The lighter shadows and patches were filled in with 2B. And then some tweaks and a little outline definition with an HB pencil.
Nothing exceptional, but definitely back on form after yesterday's attempt.
Today was less stressful than some of my recent days. I let myself have a lie-in this morning before starting work as a little act of self-care. Nevertheless, the top of my back feels achy, and my lower back was griping a bit earlier this evening. I need to shake that tension.
024 tuxedo cat
Day twenty-four of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
A tuxedo cat, looking justifiably disgusted by how he's been rendered in pencil.
There are so many things wrong with today's sketch that I don't even know where to start.
The less said, the better. So I'll just tell you that I sketched the kitteh first with an HB pencil, then added shading around his neck with a 2H pencil.
I tried to show two levels of darkness in the blacks with a 2B and a 6B pencil, but you can't really tell the difference in the end.
The shading looks like a child's colouring attempt, though it was intentional to go outside the lines and not have smooth edges.
This is a pretty good visual interpretation of the really stressful, shitty day I had today, despite it starting off positively.
On top of everything else, I'd been thinking - short of any further delays to the production he's working on - I'd get to see Simon for the first time this year on 9 March. And then he reminded me today he'll still have to self-isolate when he returns, which will be for 10 days from the day after his return to London. So, even if he returns as planned on 8 March, the earliest I'll likely see him will be 19 March.
Le sigh.
Day twenty-three of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Another late posting, though the sketch was completed on the day.
This time inspired by a photograph of mine of Melbourne General Cemetery, taken in November 2005.
I took it on the first day I took my very first DSLR - a Nikon D50 - out for a trial run before taking it to New Zealand with me on holidays.
It was the first and last time I got locked in a cemetery after closing time. I have a LiveJournal post about it but it contains a bunch of information about other extraneous stuff happening at the time, so maybe I'll edit it and share it here another time if you've not already heard the tale and would like to.
Meanwhile, getting on to today's sketch: I used an HB pencil for the base and then a 6B for shading and going over the outline. In retrospect, it was probably a little heavy-handed on the outline but I notice that my hand erases/fades some of the lines as I draw. I should probably use a tissue or a small square of paper to lay on the page under my hand to avoid that (I think I recall friends in art class doing that).
Her upper body is a little foreshortened. I started drawing her plinth about 4cm from the bottom of an A4 page. About halfway up her wings, I was worried I would run out of space for the full height of her. I had about 2cm to spare at the top of the page at the end, so if I'd started lower it would have been fine, but alas, I did not.
I also drew the shadowed section of the front of the statue on the left too wide so it's out of proportion with the rest of the drawing.
Drawing the plinth, I thought I'd gone too wide on the right panel but I've definitely thinned it. And the left side is possibly a little wider than it should be. The width of the lower section of the angel seems proportionate though, so there's that...
I realised, as I was doing my quick edit for the web, that I was wearing my glasses while drawing. I'm not sure if that had a positive or negative effect.
I generally dislike editing photos while wearing my glasses because they make everything on my screen look smaller; not right. (Though they do wonders for my figure when looking in the mirror...) If I'm going to be editing photos I always put my contact lenses in.
For those who don't know, I have a prescription of about -3.5 in each eye. I'm myopic (short-sighted) to the point that, without special (more expensive) thinned lenses, my glasses would look like the free ones on the NHS Jarvis Cocker used to sing about. Okay, maybe not that thick. This is a good illustration if you look at the -4 prescription
My prescription got as bad as -3.75 for a while but apparently, people become more long-sighted as they get older so my sight's improving over time (yay!) The last optometrist I saw did manage my expectations though. She laughingly told me that with short-sightedness as pronounced as mine it will never get back to 20/20 through ageing. Apparently, if I have to have cataract surgery later in life (which she assured me almost everyone has to) I may have 20/20 vision then. Something to look forward to in my old age, eh?!
Sorry, another tangent!
So today was another example where it looked better once I photographed it and 'stepped away from it'. Still lots of flaws but I'm learning.
And it was relaxing to draw while I listened to my music collection on random varying from The Cure, Diamanda Galas, Ash, NoFX, Aerosmith, Julia Holter, Jefferson Airplane, U2, Barry White to Madness.
A positive end to a more positive day than the previous two. Even washing a horrendously large pile of dishes is less tedious when listening to old episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage.
Hopefully tomorrow my sketch will appear online on the day of creation. But I make no promises. I'm just taking things one day at a time at the moment. I hope you understand x
And I'll leave you with a song that popped up randomly on shuffle in the last 48 hours that felt appropriate to my current project. Evident Utensil by Chairlift. Enjoy!
Day twenty-two of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I managed to finish this about ten minutes before midnight on day twenty-two. But obviously, that didn't leave enough time to get it posted on the day.
Today was a long day, but it ended with some art, so I'll say no more.
This was all drawn with an HB pencil.
I think I did okay, considering that by the time I'd hit the first barb, I'd realised I'd probably bit off more than I could chew for "a quick sketch".
In case you're unsure, I worked left to right on this one, and as may be obvious, when it started getting more repetitive, I lost my nerve and kept making mistakes. But I think I managed to bring it back okay.
I find it funny that often when I'm drawing or as I finish, I think, "Meh, I kind of hashed that today." But then, when I photograph it and look at it on a screen, suddenly it seems to fall together better than I initially thought. Not perfect or exceptional. But more convincingly than I first believed.
I hope you had a lovely weekend. Or at least nicer than mine x
Day twenty-one of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I feel like I went backwards today. But I'm trying not to be too hard on myself because I was tired and emotionally exhausted as I drew this evening.
Drawing was more of a calmative than a frustrating act tonight, even if I was doubting my ability to actually draw as I did it. At least I was doing it. I was showing up. I was sticking to my daily practice, even if all I wanted to do was collapse on the couch.
Actually, mostly I'd like to have been curling up with Simon on the couch this weekend. But his original intended return date shifted from this weekend to sometime in early March a few weeks ago.
Instead, I spent most of the day doing life admin to keep myself afloat. I didn't even get to the contract work I'd planned for today, so today became my "day off" instead of tomorrow. But without the joys of wandering with my camera or editing copious photos, as I'd planned.
It was exhausting and stressful, but it's done. Or at least back in the other side's court until I have to chase it again in a few days if they don't volley it back to me.
So anyway, this was all drawn with an HB pencil. I don't have a lot else to say as a critique, except it was probably too detailed and complicatedly subtle in variation in parts for my skills.
So I took a high-level view of most of it without going into heavy detail except on the orange where I felt I could.
6/10. Try harder next time.