Fourteen: Favourite fairy-tale. What use are fairy-tales to me? I don’t have a favourite, so I drew the first thing that came to mind: the wolf from “Little Red Riding-Hood”. I guess he appeals to me because he seems like the most interesting character in the story. Like the coyote in the Warner Brothers cartoons, I always wanted him to win over the others, who seemed awfully smug.
Fifteen: Family picture. No mean feat, as I’ve always put myself in the “cartoonist” rather than “caricaturist” category. It’s like clowns and mimes: one of those distinctions that doesn’t mean anything to people outside the craft, but is very important for the practitioners.
In this case, though, I’m satisfied that I captured something about each of the people in my immediate family. I stopped at the pencil stage, though, because I drew the picture very small and this paper is quite bleedy. The lines, no matter how fine, were sure to grow tendrils that would wreck the initial sketch. (This would be a good opportunity to use a lightbox, but this is just practice so I cannae be arsed””and I don’t have my lightbox at the pub, go figure.)
Groups of people and scenes have never been my strong point, either. I’ve always tended to draw one lone character doing something. If I were ever to take drawing up in a more serious way, this is something I’d need to get better at.
In the short term, though, I have gone back to that thing they always said to do in the books I read as a child: draw basic shapes and sketch out the anatomy first. The flaw with this was that at some stage actual talent had to come into the picture, and the instructions would skip over that part. Here’s an old graphic that’s been kicking around which illustrates this beautifully:
Sixteen: Inspiration. Seriously? That’s a prompt? Make me do all the heavy lifting, why don’t you? I drew the stupid, endless drawing challenge list.
Seventeen: Favourite plant. People have favourite plants? I had a nice orange-red flower in my office, a gerbera, but Craig forgot it was there over the holidays and didn’t water it. When I got home it was crispy and almost white.
I drew our money-plant instead. It’s actually doing well.
In related news, I found £7,000 the other day: I’d regularly socked a bunch of money away in ISA savings five and six years ago and then forgot about it. I know, eh?, how does that happen? I guess it’s not really lucky, since I set this up in the first place””but I’m awfully grateful to past-me for doing it!