Daily Sketch Project: January

Our Jack Russell Terrier, Poppi, snoozing (as usual).

At the start of 2020 I began a fun little project which involves creating one sketch per day.

A sketch is not the same as a drawing. Sketches tend to be done quickly and are intended as practice or experimental pieces, whereas drawings are more carefully composed and refined, being intended as finished works of art. People often use the two terms interchangeably, seeing how a sketch is drawn and drawing can be sketched out during its preliminary stage. Anyway, here are my favourites from January.

One of the plants growing in my studio.

A neighbour's Westie, keeping guard in their window.

Self Portrait

Bananas in a hand-turned wooden bowl.

Watercolour sketch of a tree in Birkenhead Park.

Best buddies: Emily and Poppi

Graphite and watercolour.

Sketch of my left hand.

Poppi.

Richard, with two couch companions.

Emily.

Beyond the kitchen sink.

Well, I hope you enjoyed browsing this selection of January's daily sketch project. More will follow next month. I'm using a thick journal/sketchpad of handmade Khadi paper for this project, (until it runs out). I haven't set out to focus on any particular theme or medium; it's been a case of whatever catches my attention when the time comes to do that day's sketch. I feel it's way too soon to attempt any kind of analysis or evaluation of the sketches but if you want to have a go, feel free.

Comments

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself. Folklore and myt...

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist". I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...

Dear Diary...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine. A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...

Search This Blog