Author: Dartmoor Yarns

Sunday Sevens 2019 #37

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Sunday Sevens14 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Sevens – a post where I share seven (or so) photos of my week away from the blog.

Delighted to tell you it’s been a mostly dry week with some lovely frosty mornings…

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We always put our Christmas decorations up the first weekend of December, but LH was playing golf, so we put them up on Monday…

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We also opened our jar of Arthur’s Amazing Lemon Curd that I bought at the produce market the Saturday before – it really was amazing! There was none left by Friday.

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On Tuesday I went for my first visit to a local art group. There isn’t room for new members at the moment, but visitors are allowed. Apart from at workshops you pretty much do your own thing. I made a seasonal still life and started sketching it out – maybe for next year’s Christmas cards?

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Thursday I went into Tavistock and spotted these lovely soldiers the Bedford Hotel put out for Christmas…

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Thursday was also book group Christmas dinner – where we failed to discuss last month’s book.  Personally I loved reading it until the end when I was totally disappointed and felt completely cheated by the limp ending of the various threads. I was also waiting for certain explanations  which didn’t come and therefore meant  that parts of it didn’t make any sense. So disappointing. I’m torn now whether to try another book by this author since she can write a compelling novel, but IMO completely let her audience down. Anyone else read this or anything else by Belinda Bauer?

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Friday was Dickensian Evening in Tavistock with the Christmas lights being switched on…

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Unfortunately Harry managed to skin the inside of one of the pads on his foot this week. My very kind friend gave me some dog shoes for him to wear, but I’m having a challenge getting him to wear them –  hopefully next week I can post a pick of him wearing them..

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But despite his injury Harry still had time for a quick game of Where’s Harry?20191117_19043300

Until next time,

Bekki x

 

WIP Round Up – 5/12/19

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Crochet, Knitting, Mittens8 Comments

With Christmas closing in fast and me focusing on drawing, there’s not been a lot of crafting going on, including that I’ve still not sewn up my red sweater…

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I have however nearly crochet two more Charlotte squares…

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Only one more to go!

I’ve also started a pair of fingerless mitts – same pattern as the currently nameless pair of full mittens, but in a different colour way. 

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Knitting from both ends of the ball because I wanted to knit in the car and the next thing to do on the nearly finished pair was the tubular bind off.

Plan is to write both mitts and mitten patterns up and sell as one pattern. Hopefully that will happen before Christmas – but you know how it goes.

Until next time,

Bekki x 

Drawing People

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Drawing, Learning to Draw12 Comments

I’m sure if you spotted the pic of an artist’s mannequin on Sunday, you’ll have known it wouldn’t be long before I was posting my attempts to draw it.

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As usual I tracked down a few YouTube videos to help me find some tips, techniques and best approaches and scribbled along with them.

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I particularly liked the idea of drawing the top half of the body as a domed cylinder – this helped make the process of drawing the shoulders and getting the right angles on them much  easier.

Over the next few days I tried to draw at least one pose a day.

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The idea is – apparently – that if you keep drawing the mannequin in different poses, you’ll:

  1. Get better drawing the different perspectives.
  2. Get the proportions/human form imprinted on your brain and therefore people become easier to draw.

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I’ve now set myself the goal of drawing a person every day for the next year. Hopefully at some point I’ll graduate from mannequins to something that looks more human. But don’t worry, I’m not going to post every single picture.

Until next time,

Bekki x

Sunday Sevens 2019 #36

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Sunday Sevens12 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Sevens – a post where I share seven (or so) photos of my week away from the blog.

Last weekend we went to visit the in laws. They live near Worksop where there’s been lots of flooding. There was a lot of water still around…

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…and dog walks were very muddy…

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…but the woods still very beautiful…

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Lovely husband found an interesting piece of fungi…

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… and I found a spooky pumpkin…

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Back at home, Lovely Husband decided to have just one slice of bread with his salad…

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… and this arrived in the post..

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Friday was cake craft afternoon. Here are the advent calendars two of the ladies had made in a WI workshop…

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Harry’s friend also came to stay for the day on Friday, but can you spot Harry…

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Hope you’ve had a great week.

Until next time,

Bekki x

Drawing Faces

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Drawing, Learning to Draw, Uncategorized8 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I decided to learn to draw faces.  First off I scribbled along with a YouTube video and learned to draw faces looking in different directions.

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After watching a few more YouTube videos, I followed their general instructions to draw a larger face. The result was okay, but not realistic.

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I was particularly unimpressed with the nose, so decided that was the part of the face to start learning to draw better first. Watching more videos, and reading a few tutorials too, I attempted to draw some noses.

The key to drawing a nose is that most of it’s shading. However, despite the nose videos and tutorials, and also having watched a few shading videos, I still was very unhappy with my noses.

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Recognising that I never intended to be a portrait artist anyway, I gave up, thinking I’d just wasted a couple of hours.

A few of days later I had a go at drawing some fairy faces with easier noses. This also involved exploring a little about drawing hair.

After that I decided to return to faces once I’d learnt to draw bodies. However a week later I decided to draw a still life of some leaves and logs.  Although it’s far from perfect, I found the shading so much easier to do. I also did it all with just a 2B pencil.

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So I guess the time spent attempting to draw a decent nose wasn’t wasted after all.   And who knows? I might yet become portrait artist anyway 😉

Until next time,

Bekki x

Sunday Sevens 2019 #35

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Uncategorized14 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Sevens – a post where I share seven (or so) photos of my week away from the blog.

Finally we’ve had a mostly dry week; a whole five days in a row without rain! You can tell I’m getting old, because the thing that mostly excited me was that I could put the washing out on the line…

20191118_12161800We could also get on with the gardening. Lovely Hubby finished cutting the hedges…

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… and Harry helped me prune the fuschias…

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Having regular dry dog walks was also very welcome…

20191010_102159As well as being dry it’s also sometimes been very windy. Unfortunately the wind blew down one of our bird boxes – glad it wasn’t nesting time of year…

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In other news, we attended a golden retriever meetup at Perranporth last Sunday…

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Although this time we bucked the system by taking Harry’s chum with us…

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On Friday it was my lovely neighbour’s birthday. Lovely Husband usually draws a cartoon in our neighbours’ cards, but now I’m the artist in the house I got to do the drawing…

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And finally, because I know you’re enjoying them so much, here’s another Where’s Harry photo…

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What do you mean they’re getting easier?

Hope you’ve had a great week.

Until next time,

Bekki x