Scottish Tattoo Convention Preparedness Week

The Scottish Tattoo Convention is this weekend and I am getting pretty excited, I have a wee bit of merch this year, I managed to have stickers printed and prints from one of my paintings for sale. The stickers came in yesterday on regular paper sized sheets so I had a fun night of cutting those wee guys out over and over and over. The painting I managed to sort out on Monday, but if I were more on the ball, I might have had a bit less of a frantic week this past week. I had been thinking about doing a painting for the convention since about November, but I only actually started painting it around the 14th of March, I know I am pretty good at procrastination right! But it worked out, I finished my painting and found a printers in Edinburgh to make me prints, so look out convention here I come!

We bit of my progress shots of the painting slowly but surely coming together.

Also a wee bit excited that I sad I would post and look at me here I am posting!

June Drawings

As I said in my last post, I have been drawing, and quite a bit too. The top one is based on the stories of Baba Yaga, and Dominika helped me with the Russian Cyrillic. I am hopefully going to start painting the kiwi this week as well as the koala paw. I am really excited how the paw came out as I took the reference photo a couple weeks ago when Hayley and I went to the zoo. The paw just looked perfect for drawing. And the mole makes sense if you know Kris, its part of his nickname, and it was his birthday. So here are a few different things I have been working on from india ink, to just plain sketches, and watercolours, I have been a wee bit busy with it.

I am also on instagram and I post my drawing more semi regularly there so if you want to find me there it is @courtenaydickson, but if semi monthly is enough for you don't worry, so far it looks like I am keeping to that schedule!

Oh ya and I promised an update on my tattoo,

Watercolour

Last weekend (so this was stuck as a draft for the past two weeks, I though I posted it so hopefully it all makes sense still. So rather than last weekend thing around July 22?) was a rather productive weekend, drawing wise and house wise. We had loft insulation put in last week and so we had everything that was in our attic down in the spare room and living room. So first things first, we went through all of the boxes, its amazing how much stuff accumulates up there in a year! I was amazing how much stuff we were able to get through. Then Gordon and I took the extra things away to the dump/recycling center, and Dixon got ready for his weekly skate.

So after putting the remaining boxes into the spare room temporarily, I got down to the important bits, drawing. Which I was extremely productive for the day, even though I managed to watch 2 movies and facetime with my sister for at least an hour, not to mention copious texting with progress pictures along the way, with Camille and Caryn.

I am doing a wee series of paintings, of which I have two painted and one drawn, and I am really liking them so far. I am using India Ink which I haven't used before and I am painting all of my lines, which I have tried before, but it wasn't as successful, it was a bit messy. But I am really liking the ink, it behaves a lot like the watercolours I am used to but it is a lot of fun. Each of the paintings will be places I feel are a bit like my home, so one is Canada, one is Scotland and the last is the Netherlands, so one for where I am from, one for where I am and one for where I have never been. (The scanner cropped the edges a little bit, there is a nice white border around each)

Also a wee bit about the house, we picked a wallpaper we can agree on for the spare room, which is exciting! So I really want to make a start on the spare room and get the finished.

Junes Recap

So this post is mostly a photo dump of what I have been up to lately, I just haven't been focuses on gettting stuff up here, maybe I need to do another 100 Days Happy and then I will definitely get my posts up! We will see about that. I think that is the second post of June, better late than never! So lets recap my June!

So Dixon and I did some DIY in the house, our spare room was slowly just filling with clutter and he really wants it to start to look nice, I am not too fussed by having our spare room look good just yet, I mean we don't have any planned house guests as of yet... Anyway it was still really nice to accomplish something, though it was gorgeous outside and I really would have rather been working outside than in. But you can't have everything!

Caryn's friend came over with her friend, so I got to show them around a little bit, and we went to Mary Kings Close, and she also brought with her a fantastic Care Package from my lovely sisters. Which included Tim Horton's cappuccino mix, which I am having right now, Lego, an excellent original drawing by my niece and a picture of the mentioned niece, as well as a hand egg beater! The beater would make sense if you knew the back story. Anyway we had an excellent day out, though I probably talked to much, I always forget what I know about places if you were to ask me, but seeing them and walking down the streets it all comes back. So hopefully I didn't talk their ears off.

An thus ended the Lego drought of 2014, well actually Dixon, the best husband ever, also surprised me with some Lego, I came home from work one day and there at the top of the stairs was ECTO 1 the new Ghostbusters Lego set, and let me say I was ecstatic!  

Summer is really here, and it seems to be staying, fingers crossed! Which means lunch in Princes Gardens, bees on flowers and relocation of large eight legged visitors from the house, he was huge!!!

And as well as being productive in the house I have been a bit productive with my drawing and painting, here is a new one from the semi sort of series of landscape style drawings I have been doing, and I started painting the first one. I like it in the Black and Grey, but I think that I will probably still paint it in colour. Still deciding. 

And so that has been my June, its been pretty excellent so far, all the ups and downs you would expect from me, though I have mostly just highlighted the ups here, to recap the downs, the DIY went well except for one bit fell off, but thats totally fixable, so we will hopefully get on that soon, I applied for a new job, but unfortuantely it was given to someone else after an extremely successful trial, but I think that I'll be ok and hopefully I will find another opportunity, I think thats all of the downs, so lets end on an exciting up! Tunnoks Tea Cakes are vegetarian! I had my first one this week haha!

Back to the Basics

So I haven't been posting much lately, maybe I burnt myself out with the 100 Happy Days posts, because I was posting at least once, but usually twice a week when I was doing those. But what else can I say, it is not as if I have been up to nothing, Dixon's birthday was a big one, and we had a brilliant time. I've gone out for meals, and been to shows, but I haven't felt compelled to write any of it down lately. So here we are getting back to some of my blogging basics, maybe.

I have been doing a bit of re-evalutating what I want to be doing with my life, because as nice as it is working in a skateboard shop, so components of that have been stressing me out. So each day off I have had, I have been trying to get back into drawing and painting. Which has actually happened so yay!

Perhaps a recap another day of what I have been up to, for now some drawings.

The first is from a Dr Sketchy's Edinburgh class I recently went to and I am hopefully going to another one next week, which should be as much fun as that, and the rest of the sketches are just for fun. The painting is from a drawing a did a wee while ago, but I have wanted to paint it for ages.

100 Happy Days 43-49

So I am a little bit late updating my 100 Days Happy this week, our internet totally died, so we have been trying to get it fixed al week. But yesterday someone came out and found how to fix it, and thus I am back!

I am also on holidays this week, but don't be expecting exotic locations or anything like that, I'm just using up my holiday days before they expire. Hopefully a holiday is on the horizon, as my residency came through and I'm all paid up with my lawyer. But we have lots to do in the house and not to mention the washing machine also decided to kick the bucket. But hopefully soon.

Anyway lets get going, week 7!

1. Home made Green Onion Cakes

2. T-Rex's can do stuff, with assistance

3. Flitch and Mrs Norris for Wizarding Wednesday

4. New Washing Machine

5. Watercolour by the Castle

6. New Camera EEEEE!!!!!

7. Walks with Dixon

I also got a parcel from Camille, Caryn and James, I need to get a photo of it cause my family kicks ass! I really need to remember to get photos...