crowseye
Here is one of Euron Crow’s Eye with the driftwood crown (unintentionally looking like evil Jesus). (Sorry, Jesus.)
Playing around with some new pens and markers from the London haul this year.
London calling
From a 2014 trip to London:
My mind has been on London the past 1-2 days, because I was just at Denise’s house to figure out our accommodation for our upcoming short July trip, and I ended up putting together a list of Things for the trip. There is never enough time in London, that place which is such a lovely mix of the familiar and the new.
These two were drawn at some of my favourite spots in London. First at the grass patch outside the Tate Modern, across from St Paul’s Cathedral. The second in the National Gallery (quite possibly my favourite painting there, or at least in the top ten… a really dramatic, haunting scene).
It hasn’t really occurred to me before but maybe one of the things I like the most about travelling solo is the opportunities it affords to draw. I would say draw and write, except that I am pretty crap writer, and all I write are long and long ramblings about things I just can’t seem to figure out. I haven’t done much solo travel in the last few years, except a few days in Hong Kong last year, and I was being too wrapped up in my own head to do much drawing there. Maybe a day trip would be good for me. To the beach, to the beach.
fears
More doodles from some time last year, this time of Ted and Jude. Although Jude is looking a little bit like Arya Stark here, with the quote to boot.
I added the bit about the fear being debilitating though, because it is… Perhaps this was the right time to post this, what with the setback on Friday and all. It is the fear that is the worst.
If it looks like all T & J do are stand around looking thoughtful, it’s probably because they’re my usual go-to to get thoughts and feelings out, and I definitely think too much. They are actually a bit more interesting than that.
two portraits
More doodles from 2017, lightly edited:
Was testing out a new pen (actually I think it is a marker for kids). Was also watching a lot of episodes of “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt 23” which was a surprisingly funny and refreshing show, hence the second doodle.
Also, I can’t get enough of the combination of light neon blue + salmon orange ugh such a lovely blend…!
the pack survives
I -finally- scanned in a bunch of my doodles from 2017, and I’m going to slowly post them beginning with this one:
(Lamy pen on proper sketchbook, lightly edited)
The end of the year and the start of a new year is always a great time to be extra introspective – I say extra because I think I am always pretty introspective, I am always (over)thinking, looking into myself perhaps almost a little too much.
Over the coming year I hope I can look outwards a little bit more… and think of the pack.
That is going to be very difficult, and just to demonstrate how much I dislike human beings, here is part of a “poem” that I wrote some years ago:
People of the world
I must confess
That at this moment
I hate you all
…Yep.
where do you want to go?
Keith and Stinky (and probably one of the Brownies), Mongolia 2017
There are times when riding a horse when it feels strange, out of rhythm — especially when in Mongolia, the horse may be chugging along but I am a few strides behind. Then I am just bumping along, dragged unwillingly through the momentum.
That is how the last few weeks have felt like. Me, following along with the never-stopping ticking clocks. Looking forward to any small opportunity to pull myself together again but never quite managing to.
I thought it was just Mongolia, and the melancholy that naturally comes after the end of the trip. But it is starting to feel like a funk, generally.
At some point I’ve got to get it together but just now I’d really like another afternoon by the river, another gallop up a hill, heck even another shit in the woods. Where do I go if all I know is I want to get away?
if I look back
Something from earlier this year. I’ve found myself needing to remind myself of this mantra a lot this year, and it is much-needed now with all the recent welling up of self-doubt. Sigh.
This is of course Daenerys’s mantra which is also a recurring one in her journey. I may be no mother of dragons but I’d certainly like to grow as much as she’s done.
These were separate multiple attempts to sketch Dany but which I realised also sort of worked together as a sequential panel.
Colours of the sky, and larch trees in autumn
Is it too early for a reflection-on-the-whole-year sort of post? Well I didn’t intend it, but I wanted to post a sketch from Mongolia, and I think reflection necessarily comes with thoughts of Mongolia.
(Again, kind of surprised that I still know how to use Photoshop, sort of.)
2016 is, as a whole, a pretty sucky year. Except that I went to Mongolia this year, and that may very well make up for the rest of the year. I’m not sure if I can put into written word the special-ness of that trip without being incoherent. I spent almost the entire trip fretting and praying that I would not fall off my horse and down the hills and to my death. And then I spent the following week back home feeling, in place of those said worries, not relief but hollowness. I think, maybe, that may just about sum it up and anyway I never intended this to be a wordy blog.
And then, of course, since Mongolia, a lot of things happened… both far away and closer to home.
Much more recently, I finally visited the new National Gallery of Singapore, with Mas. I really enjoyed Iskandar Jalil’s Kembara Tanah Liat collection. But the beauty of the shapes and the colours are quite difficult to capture in drawing. So on my journey home, I embarked on attempts at Georgette Chen instead:
out of shape/proportion.
still pretty out of proportion in the facial features, but I liked it enough to play around with.
I guess despite all the sucky things that happened this year, it has been a sobering year. And I am quite thankful for that.
As the Foo Fighters say, “It’s times like these / you learn to live again; It’s times like these / you give and give again”.
Or maybe that’s all bullshit, but I don’t want to stop trying.
Waterlilies (updated)
I went painting on Sunday and finally “finished” the previously-WIP painting.
I say “finished” because it was very difficult to declare it “finished”… I felt that I could keep going on trying to make it better because it can never be perfect. =_=
Decided to add some fishes into the empty space because (1) there was an empty space, and (2) who doesn’t like fishes? bloop.
LOOK, A BIRD! 