We're in the home straight!

I have one happy client today!!

Nina Clarke in her new deluxe wing at Rostrevor Hotel Barbados

The new rooms are finally coming together at Rostrevor and there's excitement all around!! I took a sneak peek at some of my artwork in the rooms today :)

EOS 600D

My Mummy came to visit me last week and she brought me my crimbo present from London which was awesome!!! (thank you all family members who chipped in to buy me the only thing I really wanted for Christmas part two- a camera)!!! 

This is not just any camera, this is a Canon EOS 600D! ok, so i don't really know a lot about cameras and I have absolutely no idea what those numbers and letters mean but I do know that i LOVE this camera!!!

The quality is about a trillion times better than my sucky (but well loved) no name camera. It's totally big and burly too. It's the Chuck Norris of cameras! I'm pretty sure my other camera would pee it's pants and run for cover if it bumped into the EOS 600D in a dark ally. My apologies to anyone who stumbled across my blog looking for a serious product review of this camera. You'll find nothing so useful here.

Anyway, as I was putting my camera together (not from scratch, it's not some sort of IKEA camera) I remembered my Mum urging me to read the instruction manual and take my time etc. I was gonna completely take her advice too and do the whole reading thing, find out exactly what all the little buttons do, twiddle with the thingies etc. But then the instruction booklet was like the size of an Oxford Dictionary. So I took the much less boring but ultimately more complicated route of just press stuff and see what happens!

Here's what happened!!

 
 

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

Something cool happened to me this week so I thought I'd share it.

If you've been following you'll know that I embarked on a 30 day drawing challenge over Christmas. You may also remember this drawing I did for day 27.
Well I was contacted yesterday by someone from a website called AfroDigital who wanted to use my funny little drawing as a slider image on the website!

Of course I said yes and today Afro-Dari (as I've decided to call him) went live on the web!

Pimpin' ain't easy!

DIY Cushions

My Family bought me a sewing machine for Christmas!! I don't mean the confusion of farmyard animals illustrated here, my other family (I have two, my life's awesome like that) ;)

Soooooo I had to break it in (the sewing machine, not my family). The sitting room cushions needed replacing so that was job one!

Here are the befores

And here are the afters!!

I still need to finish the bolster cushions for this couch. I'll do my best to post my progress!

What happened to the fabric I took off the other cushion I hear you ask?!

I dyed it! :)

I'm still in the process of figuring out exactly what to do with it but if I come up with anything good I'll post it!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Days 25 - 30!!!

Hello all!! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas!! If you don't celebrate Christmas I hope u had a lovely weekend ;)

I'm about to post the final drawings from the challenge (it officially ended yesterday). So here we go!

Day 25 was scenery. My apologies for the slightly crumpled nature of this drawing. Biro and water colour tend to have that effect on paper. 

In case you were wondering, this is the view from one of the many glorious windows in my bedroom :)

 I had no trouble at all thinking of something I don't like for day 26.

I would go so far as to say that I despise mosquitoes. I'm constantly irritated by them and I'm yet to discover what role they play in our ecosystem that is so important that they just can't die already!!
I think I should be able to wear shorts around my house without fear of having my legs bitten to shit and then having to spend the rest of the day stinking of aloe vera. I feel it is also my right to go to bed without covering my entire body with repellent only to wake up and find i've been bitten on my eyelid because, silly me, I forgot to smear a big dollop of cream there!! grrrr!!!!

OK, calm is returning.......mosquitoes, u suck. On to better things. Here's a picture of someone I love for day 27.

I think you'd be surprised by how accurate this is! My boyfriend did just point out that he doesn't have quite as impressive a neck beard as this guy seems to have. I did try to explain that the absence of neck means that his beard has mingled with the hair at the back of his head but there's just no pleasing some people!

Anyway, on day 28 I was supposed to be drawing anything I'd like which was a refreshing change. Day 28 was Christmas eve so I decided to draw a Christmas tree!

 Day 29's challenge was to draw somewhere I'd like to go. I'd really like to go to peru to see Machu Picchu (and also pick up some new pyjamas). Here's my shocking attempt at capturing it.

From what I can tell it's really beautiful when I'm not left to draw it.

That brings us to the final day of the drawing challenge, day 30! Here's my congratulatory banner for finishing the challenge :)

To be honest I'm pretty glad to see the back of this drawing challenge business. There's a few things I've discovered in the last month. Firstly it's really hard to draw something good every day, secondly it's a really bad idea to attempt this over Christmas (or any time that's likely to be busy for that matter). And thirdly, Crayola don't make enough varied colouring pens. It's no wonder children draw such God awful pictures!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Days 17 - 24

Once again I'm waaaaaaaaay behind posting my drawing challenges. Ironically I lost my inspiration shortly after drawing it on day 16 and couldn't think of anything to draw on day 17! Luckily I've been designing some fabric for a curtain in the living room and it just so happened to have leaves on it. So from now on my favourite plant will be a Breadfruit tree!

I don't know if the challenges are getting harder or if I'm getting lazier but something about the subjects after day 15 has me stumped.
Having said that, day 18 was probably the easiest so far! Here's my doodle,

It would have been a lot easier to come up with something to draw for 19 after Christmas considering I should have at least one new thing by then. The newest thing I could think to draw was an earring (from my birthday.........in August........)


Day 20 was something orange so naturally I had to rep the B to the L to the O to the double G, E, R. Don't worry my boyfriend has already taken the trouble to point out that I'm "not even slightly cool." You should know that he makes this observation whilst reading science fiction on his own in a dark corner.

It took me a minute to come up with something I wanted on day 21! Originally I was gonna draw an elaborate house with a big pool and lots of outdoor living space but that hurt my brain so I went with something more straight forward (and attainable). 

I feel like I maybe should have drawn me with my family and friends in a heart-warming embrace on day 22 but.......instead I drew a Game Boy!

I almost reached the absolute pinnacle of laziness on day 22 when I went to draw something I need. I was going to draw oxygen so that I didn't have to draw anything at all. Deciding this was damaging to the spirit of the challenge I drew a hoody!

 
Yes people you heard me right. I'm in Barbados and I need a hoody.

The Muppets finally came to the island after being released just about everywhere else in November so Piggy and Kermit were my couple of choice on day 23.

My piggy looks a little bit stoned! Oh well!

I still have 4 more days to post before I'll be completely up to date but I have to go and decorate some cakes I made last night. Got a bit of a cocktail party happening this evening and I seem to have found myself in charge of the food :-s

I'll try and post the rest a bit later or failing that tomorrow. Toodles for now!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Days 14 - 16

I'm still beavering away with this drawing challenge! As the title would suggest I'm gonna show you days 14 to yesterday (day 16).

Day 14's challenge was to draw my favourite fairytale. This is a fairly abstract representation of the fairytale I chose (but then it's also a pretty abstract fairytale). I would encourage you to comment if u know where this sentence comes from :)

I don't generally have the patience required for drawing great portraits so I decided to take a different approach to the challenge on day 15. Here is a portrait of my family according to the Chinese Zodiac.

If you're wondering who's who I'm not gonna tell u! But you're welcome to guess ;)
I'll even help by telling u which members of my family are pictured here. Me, my Mum, Dad, Brother, Sister and Granny.

Moving on. Yesterday's challenge was tricky. I had to draw inspiration. This concept had me confused because I'm pretty accustomed to drawing from inspiration but I wasn't entirely sure how to go about drawing inspiration itself. In the end I figured that colour was my only constant source of inspiration and went with that!

Today's drawing is my favourite plant but since I haven't figured out exactly what that is yet I'm gonna close this post to go think about it. I'll leave u instead with a picture of the Christmas cookies my clever boyfriend made!