HANDS – A DRAWING TO KEEP ME GOING, AND RESURRECTING THE PERSIAN TILES CROCHET THROW
Drawing hands
Until my new pastel pencils arrive next Friday, I cannot get on with the online art course work. Not wanting to be idle and needing to keep up with my art practice, I drew some hands this afternoon in my Coptic-bound daily sketchbook.
Since starting the course, I have definitely been looking at things differently, and bookmarking various images that I thought might be worthy of attempting a drawing. My observation skills are definitely waking up these days and I am noticing a lot more – although I have always been pretty observant but perhaps not in quite the same way.
A few weeks ago I was watching an interview on YouTube and the interviewee gestured a lot with his hands while speaking. I managed to do a screen grab of a particularly interesting gesture, and cropped this image down so that I could use it as a reference for drawing a pair of hands with some foreshortening – a great exercise.
I began with pencil, and this time I did not use the proportional divider at all. I think I got the proportions pretty accurate in the end, with a bit of fiddling. I added some shading for the darker values, and then proceeded to work with the ink pens, and finally to give the drawing a black watercolour wash. I really enjoy working in these media.
There are plenty more hand studies to attempt on Prof Lieu’s Flickr album where she has uploaded tons of photos she has taken herself, specifically for use as references. It’s a great resource. (This link is to just one “hands” album, and there are many other subjects, from wigs to fire hydrants!)
Persian Tiles crochet blanket redux
After months of sitting in the bag inactive, this project is now being worked on once more. The recent knitting project got me back intro “yarn” mode and I thought I’d crack on with this and get it finished. It consists of 16 quite large octagons with “granny squares” in between and it’s a gorgeous pattern. I am altering the colours from the original, but there are plenty of alternative colour schemes that people have done, and each time it gives a different effect. I decided to make all my octagons and squares the same, and chose reds, blue, black, white and grey to tone with the colours in our sitting room. I have now completed just over half the total number of octagons.
This is not what I would consider to be a crochet project for beginners – it’s quite complicated and I have to concentrate on what I am doing. Lots of ends to work in with all the colour changes, too. I enjoy a challenge, but this isn’t something I’d take out and about with me, or be able to do while chatting with others. Friday and Saturday were relatively quiet days and I managed to complete an octagon on each day, and this evening I’ve made a good start on a third. I am hoping to complete all 16 by the end of the month but that may be over-optimistic. I have quite a number of whole, half and quarter granny squares to work as well, to fill the gaps and produce straight edges, and then there will be a border to work. It’s certainly a very interesting and enjoyable project and once finished, I think it’s going to look quite magnificent! I love crochet as it grows so fast and you can get a lot of interesting textural variety from relatively simple stitches.
The original plan was to make a throw for the back of the settee and this is probably where it will eventually end up, but in the meantime the recent knitted blanket has usurped that position!
Here is Ruby giving her seal of approval to a completed octagon.
The octagons I have made are pretty lumpy at the moment, but when they are all done, I shall block them. This has a miraculous effect of flattening out any lumps and bumps and unevenness – a total transformation! It’s part of the process I really enjoy – not so much the doing of it, but when you unpin all the elements and see them as they are supposed to be.
