Drawing is something I’ve done occasionally throughout my life in dribs and drabs. When I was young I used to try drawing animals but they never came out very well.
When I was in my teens is when I did lots of drawing, sadly the majority of that has been lost over the years as both I and my parents have moved since then. I did try drawing fashion for some time but most of the time it was dark or gothic, lots of eyes and gravestones. Eyes are still something I really like to draw as they have a lot of variation but it’s always clear what they are.
I really started back up again mostly because Ste felt that the drawings I made as part of my other hobbies were good and asked me to try focusing on the drawing itself, so it has been turned it into one of my regular hobbies.
I have several creative hobbies – I’m very crafty and I usually like to have my hands do something as I watch tv or listen to audio-books [which my dyslexia makes much more common, as many fascinating books are unfortunately beyond my capacity to read].
Recently I’ve been doing knitting and crochet, just starting do these last year and I’ve already made 3 scarfs and a few stuffed toys – as well as a few toys for our pet cat.
Colouring books are another hobby I’ve been practising for a while – I tend to use lots of colours, putting some of my own personality into the final product even if the line art is already fixed. I find it few relaxing but just like drawing I don’t really do it in front of the tv because I like to concentrate on it a bit more. I can still listen to a book, but anything that would take up my eyes would distract too much.
And lastly there’s cross-stitch I started doing when I was 8. I did stop briefly in my teens, but I picked it back up again as I got older and I’ve done so many over the years some big, some small, some easy, some hard. I usually have one or two kits going at any one time and do a few small ones too – for Christmas I try to make sure that those I care about get one as a card or tree decoration.
Cross-stitch is what got me drawing again – I started designing my own now and again, working on squared paper to create the pattern; I did one for my grandma on top as a gift. I figured out how to do ones of monsters because it seemed cool, and it’s something I never see so I thought they might be useful for the business – possibly for sale at conventions.
I usually draw on squared paper as I find it easier to get started on than a blank page – and it helps me work out shapes and keep things neat which I feel helps things look good, since I like them to be neat I do use a ruler, compass and things like that. Since it’s on squares it can look a bit pixelated. and cross-stitch patterns usually do too, the most simple ones are and simple is generally the best place to start. But the pixelation I have grown passed with practice both with my cross-stitch and drawing and other thing that help with this size and shape – if something’s big it usually looks less pixelated and the same with putting curves in, which can be done in cross stitch through haft stitch and back stitch allowing different angles of diagonal.
So for my drawing i ten to start out on squared paper with a H2 pencil because it’s easy to rub out, then I go over it with a dark pencil and colour – this sometimes gets mixed again once I like what I’ve done, I go over it with transfer paper since there no way that we found to get rid of squares on the PC without losing lots of detail from the image.
