Good morning lovely readers. It’s been a while since I wrote a chatty post, hasn’t it? Months, in fact, so with the year coming to an end, I thought I should crack out the virtual ink and let you all know what I’ve been up to. At first glance, I wasn’t sure I’d managed to do that much, but then I delved a bit deeper and it turns out that 2021 was really quite good.
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Since the launch of my poetry collection I’ve been struggling to write much in the way of poetry, so I’ve picked up my sketch pad and pencils instead. The image above was actually from a poem idea that I’ve been swirling around for a few days. The hand is my own, and I used a photo of my hand holding an empty wine glass as well as the very usefully close by real thing (my hand that is) to reference where the fingers bent and how the palm creased in this position. I spent about two and half hours playing around before I decided that this was probably as good as it would get for now.
Unlike in the past, I decided not to worry about erasing mistakes as soon as I made them. I misjudged the scale of the glass to start with and had to make it larger a couple of times, and adjust how the fingers were positioned. I left all the original lines in until I was confident that I’d got the scale correct and then went back to neaten things up. I think this helped me avoid getting bogged down in going over and over a line to make sure it was ‘perfect’ and also probably kept me from shredding the paper by using the eraser too much.
As I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself about the image above I decided that I might have a go at this month’s Doodlewash prompts. I’m a bit late to the game but the tenth and the eleventh were both quite nice prompts to ease me into things. Candy (sweeties) for the tenth and snowflakes for the eleventh. I’m happier with the tenth than the eleventh, but they both made me sit down and draw things I wouldn’t normally have drawn so it was a good challenge to undertake. I doubt I’ll be taking part every day but one of my 2020 goals will be to dip in at least once a month and hopefully end up with at least twelve doodles I wouldn’t otherwise have by the end of next year. I might even improve a bit.
A ten minute sketch to try and get back into the swing of things since I haven’t drawn anything in a while. I picked the nearest thing to me which was my bedside table and decided to have a go at drawing what was on that.
One of my challenges for 2016 was to improve my drawing skills and specifically to improve at drawing people. I’ve decided therefore, that Wednesday shall be the day that I show off all [if any] of the drawing and doodles that I’ve completed during the week. So for today, the first doodle Wednesday, I present today’s attempt at drawing people.
I also did a few doodles this week, a hand from the cover of Skulduggery Pleasant Mortal Coil and a rose since it was apparently national rose day the other day. I’m happier with the hand more than the rose since faces and hands are the two things I struggle to draw most.
Have you guys ever heard of Free Comic Book Day before? I haven’t. Recently it seems that quite a few national/international days have been popping up and I knew nothing about them at all.
Of course it’s great for bloggers since we always have sometime to ramble about, but back to the topic at hand.
According to the Twittersphere, today is Free Comic Book Day and it seems a heck of a lot of people are tweeting about it. I’ll admit that I’ve never been much of a comic book reader, aside from the Beano when I was a child, because hey! Who doesn’t love Beano? I used to keep my collection in an box I’d decorated with sticky back vinyl that had the world map printed on it. Minnie the Minx was my favourite character with Dennis the Menace a close second. I think the fact that Minnie had short hair like mine and liked scrambling around with the boys appealed to me. I spent most of my primary school days playing with lads instead of girls and I found my friendships with them were much stronger than the ones I formed with the other girls in my year.
Now days, my favourite comic book character has to be Deadpool. I didn’t know much about him until I started dating my fiancée who introduced me to the comics. During my second and third year at university, he leant me his collection of Deadpool comics and I found myself falling in love with this insane, funny, slightly tragic character. What made things even better was getting to watch the Deadpool movie and see Ryan Reynolds portray that character from the comics to perfection.
The picture of Deadpool took me about an hour and a bit to get to the point you can see in the pictures, the sketch of Minnie took about ten minutes. For a man with very few facial features this was not an easy draw. I kept getting the eyes in the wrong place and the black patches on the mask make it difficult to judge how long and wide the image should be on the page. I’m fairly happy with both of them though and I’m glad I’ve had chance to do some drawing again.
Let me know in the comments what your favourite comic book was as a child? Did you read the Beano too or perhaps you read it’s great nemesis, The Dandy! Whatever it was, come and share it.
Carol J Forrester - Writing and Works 
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