Drawing for me

Looking through my photo's I realised that last year was the year I drew for everyone else but me. 

I wanted (and needed) to sell prints, due to the recession which has shrunk all my income streams into a trickle.

I thought that if I drew what I thought people would like to buy that the prints would sell, but I hadn't considered that just because you like something it doesn't mean you are going to buy it.

I also drew for the people who said "I'd love to see a drawing of my building/shop/house etc etc" at the time I considered this was an intent to buy, but it wasn't. It was exactly what they said, "I would love to see.." not "I would like to buy.."

Over the last year attending fairs & markets numerous people commented that their house wasn't on one of my drawings, so they wouldn't buy it, but if I did a drawing that included their house that they would buy a print.

Over the past few weeks I have been considering starting several new drawings that would include all the missing houses, I even printed several photo's to use as inspiration, but I haven't been inspired enough to put pen to paper.

I think life is telling me to draw for me, so I'm rewinding, hoping I'll get back to here or some place similar.

At present I have a block about starting something and getting it wrong, so Iam colouring and altering prints that don't sell.

At the moment I'm working on Hollerday House

Which started off as this.

The coloured version is a bit of a mess, as I'm still trying to find the right pens to use, there are a few places where the markers have bled over the line or tiny spots of colour when the acrylic pen decided to leak, but on the whole I'm very happy and enjoying every minute of it.

At the moment my guilty pleasure is looking at pens on-line trying to find the perfect one to colour prints, a few have accidentally ended up in the post on their way to me 😁

Experiments & other stuff

Not only have I finished Ilfracombe , but I've also finished Woolacombe.

I quite like it, but got carried away with acrylic pen and have over worked it. I was going to have it framed so I could exhibit it, but I'm not sure its worth it, so I'll find/make a mount and sell it as it is.

After finishing a major project I always feel a bit lost, so this weekend I've been playing until inspiration strikes. I decided I needed to tackle my Verona green sketchbook, the paper is beautiful, but the green dulls the colours and colour is my thing, so I've struggled to use it. I decided to experiment with different mediums, the first was Posca acrylic pens (one of my favourites) and think I don't need to look any further they are perfect, the colours are luminous.

The drawing on the right is drawn with a 0.003 pen and coloured with a 0.5 pen, it would be nice if I could perfect combining the two pens. 

 

I follow the artist  Niamh Moran on Instagram she works over her prints, adding more colour and detail, so each print is individual. As I've got several prints that don't sell I thought I'd experiment.

This is the First quarter of Summer, I've used several different mediums trying to find one that works. I used fine line felt pens, marker pens, coloured pencils and finally acrylic pens. Fine line pens are too dark, the paper is porous so the markers bleed, my pencils are too soft, I struggle to keep them within the lines, but yet again the acrylic pens are perfect.

Experimenting with Summer has led me to look at it again.

Summer started as a drawing of all the places we had visited with our grand boys in the school summer holidays in 2022.

The original has orange juice and dog foot prints all over it thanks to my then very large bouncy puppy, so I knew I could never sell it, so I put it into photoshop and started drawing over it. In the autumn of 2022 I started drawing Lynton and abandoned Summer. At that time I had only drawn the top half, so I cut it into 2 pieces to sell as quarters of Summer.

I had several prints of the First quarter of Summer, but as it wasn't popular I never bothered having the second quarter printed.

At some point in time I coloured the first quarter in digitally, which I love. I only have one copy, which is framed and has been shown at my Exmoor Parks exhibition.

I loved the colour version so much that I want to colour the whole drawing, unfortunately I can't find the original the digital progress image, plus the two quarters didn't match up as I'd redrawn the edges where they met.

So I've started the digital drawing again. The above is what I have drawn so far, the cream background is just to give an idea of how big it is.

I have visions of an A1 coloured version, framed on my wall and maybe a plan of where to submit it if I finish it in time.

And lastly I have a new sketchbook, which I'm so excited about, it's a A5 concertina sketchbook. I will be able to draw one page at a time and slightly overlap onto the next page, enabling all the drawings to become one large image.

I'm so excited I can't wait for it to stop raining so I can find something to draw in it.