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.

Website overhaul

 I've been preparing some more for setting up self employed. I decided my website www.sannadyker.com needed a bit of an overhaul as even though I liked the scrapbook look I felt it was quite difficult to navigate.  I wanted something more streamlined and easier for me to update.  I found the perfect design on Cargo Collective for what I needed, so after re-scanning my drawings, I've slowly been updating it.  It's offline at the moment but I'm about 90% complete so will make it live very soon.

As well as the home page layout, I really like the pages for each individual image. It's the sort of clean cut, minimalist look I was trying to find. Cargo Collective is a really brilliant and easy to use site if you're looking for a new look for your website. Their designs are really easy to update as well.

As well as changing up my website I've been working on some new drawings. I find it quite hard to get fully involved in new work as I'm often only off for one day at a time but I'm working on them a little bit here and there. I'm also currently window shopping for a new drawing desk. A proper drawing set up will be a big help for getting on with work. If anyone has any recommendations, do let me know!

A love of stationary and a bit of drawing

A new year always means the chance for a new diary and some new stationary.  This year it's safe to say I went a bit bonkers on the stationary front. I love buying my yearly diary from Sticker Stack as they source their products from Japan and Korea which means lots of beautifully designed pieces. This year I got the same diary as I did last year but in blue as it was the perfect size and has a really nice layout inside. I also bought some sticker sheets from them and a nice pen too.

In Memory

It has been a very odd start to the year.  Just over a week ago the world lost David Bowie and then a few days later, Alan Rickman. Of course I didn't know either of these men personally, nor did I ever have the chance to meet them in person. That doesn't mean however that I feel a great sadness at their passing. These were faces and voices that I knew growing up.

I decided that the best way to honour their memory was to do it in the best way I knew how, by drawing them. They were both in their own unique ways, incredibly inspiring individuals and I can only hope this does them even a little bit of justice.

cross stitch has entered my life

I've always been intrigued by cross stitch having once tried it at primary school as part of a Victorian project. We got given a piece of large weave fabric, a giant plastic needle and some wool to cross stitch our initials. I remember enjoying seeing the shapes appear on the fabric and the simplicity of the stitches that it took to create them.

Even though I'd loved it I'd never tried it again until now after being given a cross stitch kit for my Christmas of a pattern based on one of my favourite artists, L.S. Lowry. During my Christmas holidays I was sitting for days at a time working away on the street scene.  I got quite a large amount done and now I'm back to work the progress is slower but I'm getting there bit by bit. 

The kit is by a company called Bothy Threads and if you're interested in starting out or already do cross stitch and fancy a new pattern, I'd highly recommend checking them out. The kits come with an easy to follow pattern, instructions, the full range of coded threads needed, and the fabric. I got the embroidery ring for Christmas but you can easily pick these up in most craft shops including Hobbycraft.

The reason I started up this time was also because I wanted to get into creating my own images with thread, whether that be with cross stitch or embroidery. The latter is my next venture and I'd really love to try and create my drawing style but using these materials. `As well as that I also just love it as a form of relaxation. Cross stitch is incredibly easy once you get started and just like when I was wee,  I love seeing the image slowly appear on fabric. 

This is my progress so far! I'm working on the right hand side of the image first and once completed I'll move on to the left.  I finished of the blue of the roof today and I really love the colour scheme as a whole.  I often use these colours in my own work. I will be posting my progress as I go along so expect another one soon!

If you're in the Dundee area, there is a new sewing club called 'Say It Ain't Sew' which is an excellent opportunity to start sewing if you're interested in starting a new hobby.  I can't make it myself as I no longer live in the city but if you live in the area it'd be a great place to try out something new!

2016!

So it's 2016 and I've not been about on here for a bit but I have been working on some bits and bobs and I thought it was high time for an update! I hope everyone had a very lovely Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

2015 brought some great opportunities for me. When you're busy working full time at your day job, it becomes difficult to work on your personal projects but thankfully every now and then you manage and I hope that becomes a more regular occurrence this year. It has certainly been paramount to increasing my confidence in the creative work that I do and also shown me that I can do it.

One of the opportunities that came my way was from Creative Dundee to create the image for the PechaKuchaNight Dundee Volume 13. PechaKucha is a presentation format where 20 images are shown for 20 seconds each and the PechaKucha nights allow creatives from all sorts of disciplines to talk about their work and inspirations. I wanted to highlight something connected to Dundee in my image.  Working in the museum, I see the Tay Whale skeleton everyday I thought I would bring it back to life and incorporate it into the image (along with some whale family).
I was really happy at with the positive response my image received and it was a really great opportunity and experience to work with Creative Dundee. Certainly a big confidence boost.

Another great opportunity arose when I finally plucked up the courage to enter the Royal Scottish Academy Open Exhibition 2015. I entered two drawings, both inspired by my love of old objects.  I had spent some time in the National Museum of Scotland sketching some of my favourite pieces and this led on to drawing one of them as a final piece to enter into the RSA. The drawing is of some of the small coffins found on Arthur's Seat. In 1836 seventeen miniature coffins were found hidden in a small cave on Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. They were found by a group of boys and those that have survived are now in the National Museum of Scotland. I drew six of them in a row for the final piece.  I love the mystery that surrounds these strange but beautifully made coffins, each with their own carved, dressed figure inside. No one is really sure what they were for, what they represent or why they were hidden on Arthur's Seat.

The second piece I drew was of another museum object but this time from The McManus in Dundee. It is an Inuit doll, probably made by a child to help them learn how to sew. I love the intricate details on the doll from the sewing to the wear from age. The selection process goes through two stages and I was completely over the moon when I found out that both my drawings had been selected to be in the exhibition. The RSA Open exhibition is still on at the moment and is on until February the 14th.

This month I also had a great meeting with Cultural Enterprise Scotland. I was looking for some advice on how to properly set up freelance as it's something I've never really known the details of. They have so much advice and information to give which was incredibly helpful and made me feel a lot more confident about taking the plunge to become self employed. I can't thank them enough for the help they gave me. It's certainly made my plans and goals a lot more accessible for the year the ahead. Exciting times!

Beach finds from Morar and Sanna Bay

As I mentioned in a previous post, I visited both Morar Beach and Sanna Bay on my holiday.  I had a lot of shells to sort through, giving them a little soapy bath and then dusting off any left over sand. 

The main collection I've photographed is just from Morar as I couldn't stop myself from picking up more and more. Once you start picking up shells, it's hard to stop.

Morar beach has so many pieces of broken shell that have been smoothed in the sea, creating lovely abstract twisted shapes. These were my favourite. There were also a lot of cowries that look like puppets mouths or so I thought. My granny loved finding cowries and was always the first one to find one on the beach.

Beach combing was definitely something that I've always been doing. Since I was very little I'd love to find pretty shells on the beach or stones that looked unusual. I'd pop them in my pockets and every now and then I'll find a collection of stones or the odd shell in a drawer or cupboard from a walk on the beach years ago.

I particularly love the shells that I found which have tiny holes in them. I've since found that these holes have been made by possibly any number of things in the sea from sponges to tiny worms. There's a lot of different creatures out there nibbling holes in shells in seems.

I also found a shell with a heart on it. I felt pretty lucky to have found this out of all the shells on the beach. 

Below are the shells I found on Sanna Bay.  The shells here were spread out so you had to hunt for them a bit more. I was also too busy taking lots of photos of Sanna since I hadn't been back there for a while. I thought these ones were particularly beautiful though.

As a little memento of my trip I took two of the smoothed shell pieces, one from Morar and one from Sanna and made a necklace with them.  The pieces hang together perfectly and I think it makes quite an unusual but special piece of jewellery. 

Just to finish, here is myself and my granny, back when beach combing was a new fun hobby I'd just started out on.