The path to insanity

I was watching a programme on the TV recently, and it showed the Standing Stones of Stenness, and the Ring of Brodgar, both in Orkney, and I thought they'd be fun to have a shot at doing. I liked the sky swirling effect that I'd used on the Starry Doodle Night drawing, so thought I'd make use of it again here. I also thought I'd fill in the rock surfaces with dots for texture. Which, in theory, is a good idea, but with a 0.05 nib pen, it's a bit of an epic process. So I started doing the sky, and the stone texture dots...

Doing the dots became veeeeery boring, very quickly! I much preferred doing the sky texture...

It took SO LONG to do the dots! Hours, and hours, and hours.

And hours....I was going absolutely up the wall while doing the dots, but eventually, I completed it, yay!

The Standing Stones of Stenness, completed.

I really quite like it, so I think it's one worth getting prints made of for my Etsy shop....whenever I get a chance to get to the printshop!

To add to my madness, I've started the year as I mean to go on - with more crafting! So here's a sneak preview of the next drawing, of the Ring of Brodgar.

Dancing in the dark

A friend asked recently if I could make a gift for her brother from some favourite song lyrics. Usually when I do a gift it's because I've had an idea myself, so it was a bit different to work to match her plan for what he would like. It took a bit of effort to make the shape of the person recognisable (I'm not used to doing specific figures/people, just generic "people shapes"), but I think I got there in the end. Hope he liked it!

Quilling on canvases

It's November, so that means it's time to be sorting out Christmas presents. Not mine though: I have a few commissions I need to sort out that are going to be used as Christmas gifts, so I need to concentrate on them.

Before that though, I did a few other quilled items to put in my Etsy shop, one's a new design for a commission, and the other one I've done plenty of times before, but not for a while. I like doing the mini canvases, they frame the quilling really well, in a compact space. So here they are! :)

Rabbit

Ladybird

I suppose I'd better get back to those commissions now - I love commissions, but they can be tricky to do when you're being asked to do something that someone else is imagining rather than you!