The last few months

So over the last few months I have been busy doing this and that.  The following is the 'this and that'  which I have been doing. To start with, my website is finally finished! I'll be tweaking it here and there over time but the main set up is complete.  You can head on over to www.sannadyker.com to have a wee look.

Secondly I've taken some holiday time off my daytime job this week to create some larger works. The main piece is what I've started here below.  The first step is always the most nerve-wracking. 

I completed this smaller practice run a few weeks ago and decided it would be a good challenge for myself to make a larger piece. The smaller piece was a challenge in itself as I wanted to include as much detail as I could possibly add. I'm interested to see how the larger piece will unfold. 

As well as drawing I've been filling my time in-between with reading. I'm slowly working through the work of David Mitchell after falling in love with Cloud Atlas. I'm currently reading Ghostwritten at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. When popping into Waterstones to stock up on more of his work, I noticed Patience by Daniel Clowes radiating colour off the shelf.  I've seen his drawing style before and loved it but have never got around to buying any of his work. Patience then became my next purchase and then of course I also got Ghost World. From there I then bought Black Hole by Charles Burns and Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine. Yeah, I went a bit crazy.  But these drawings are beautiful, and the storylines and fantastically relatable. Real life albeit with odd twists here and there is always a joy to read about.  I also purchased Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics and Graphic Novels. This will be excellent for finding out about some more graphic novels to pick up in the future.

A few weeks back I drew a few of the skeletons from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo. I've been fascinated by this place for years and I'd love to visit it one day. I've always been interested in how different cultures respect their dead and how they deal with death. The Capuchin skeletons are so well preserved and looked after and they are incredibly interesting to draw as they hold so much detail.  I'll probably draw a few more of them in the future.

I draw on paper, 99.9% of the time, but I've been doing some drawing/painting on some of the shells I've found on beaches over the last few years.  Here are a couple that I have finished.

 These two 80's teens were kind of a new subject for me to draw as I tend to like drawing the elderly with their amazing wrinkles and weathered faces. Younger skin is a new venture but I'm going to try drawing young people since it'll be something a bit different for me.  I have to step away from the wrinkles.

 Another couple of finished pieces were a set of shells and a set of arrow heads. I love to indulge in drawing small detailed items like this. I'm addicted to detail. These were both a joy to complete.

I'll be back soon with some more updates of my large drawing project.