About me
I am middle aged bloke, living in UK, who earns a crust as a lawyer to keep a roof over my head, food on the table, the occasional holiday and make sure these two awesome have better food and care than myself.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been moving from being an employee to being self-employed. All that stuff is on another website. This has been and is an interesting journey one of the many pros/cons is the freedom and having a bit more time when things are quiet.
I also have a love affair with France. I’ve taken a couple of career breaks and in both cases I’ve spent virtually all of it in France and I miss the most that daily mental challenge of learning French . Maybe one day I can go back for another extended stay as my French is pretty awful these days.
I’ve had this website for a while and pretty much only use it as a personal blog. Now, I am going to use it to document, track and share learning to draw and illustrate. At some point, when I feel more confident, I may also publish some stories.
Drawing Background
I can’t call myself a beginner-beginner because I have done classes and drawn stuff in the past. What I’ve kept in terms of drawings from the “recent” past is in the practice gallery.
I did art at school until the age of 14. I wasn’t particularly good though I could copy stuff usually an animal of some sort or a comic book character. At school stage I used to draw regularly outside of class – I would draw animals and I would copy comic book characters; I even at one point did a couple of simple comic strips that involved taking the p*** out of my sisters.
After 14, I dropped anything that wasn’t remotely scientific: drawing and French were victims of that (which is rather ironic given where I am now). After that, well the only thing that I did in terms of drawing were adult classes. I did nothing until after Law School. Over the years, I’ve done a few classes but rarely did much between classes. Being a young solicitor requires a level of commitment that can often be mean it is to the exclusion of anything else.
During the gap years, I also tried to take classes when I was in France and joined a local drawing classes. This time I did spend time outside of the class doing some drawings, being more motivated – see the practice gallery. When I returned to the UK, the only other class, and remains the only other class I’ve done (in or around 2014) was a children’s illustration course and it was excellent – it is still on if you live around west London. It was the first time I sought to take an active step to trying to do illustration and this was the closest in-person one I could find at the time. However, my drawing skills were pretty lacking when compared to the others in the class.
I should add that my deceased father was a bit of an artist/craftsman and had a little shop that sold items with gold and silver inlays with engravings on glass, all of which he designed and created. I doubt that is an inheritable gene.
A very quiet start to my steps to being self-employed and lockdown should have been a great opportunity to get on with it. It wasn’t. I was just starting out, trying to deliver a legal service as a consultant rather than as an employee is not the easiest of journeys. With lockdown generally, I found myself being quite lethargic and found it easier to say “tomorrow” and watch anything on Netflix. I did do some drawing but in fits and starts and the practice gallery shows those moments.
However, towards the end of 2021, I started to get out of whatever funk I was in and developed the “Learn Avec Moi” to get over the inertia and try to build some momentum.
Learn avec moi
At its core Learn Avec Moi is simply a journal or record of me learning to draw and illustrate. There is so much free out there especially for beginners, that with a bit of effort the idea is that you can learn some basics without having to sign up to a course.
My approach to learning anything is to take time with the basics, build a good foundation and then go into detail. Any good course will do the same. I don’t mind going right back to basics even if it means spending time learning something I know already.
Also, for drawing – doing is way more important than any time learning theory or doing and accordingly the focus is always on getting pen to paper.
I set a target, work on it and then move on to the next target when I think I’ve hit that target. I try and break down the key components of a target, what hurdles there may be and the reference images. Anything I have to learn, I will look for on the internet and youtube and make notes.
I’ll develop the targets as I go along as I try and plot my way through everything I want to learn!
If you want to know a bit about my thought processes and self-discovery then go here.
Website, Access and Gallery
The plan was developed in or around Nov and Dec 2021 but I held off on website as I focussed on the first target. I always intended February 2022 to get the website side of it up and running which would host the drawings in real time but has drifted into March as well.
The historic and practise drawings are now all uploaded but there will be a lag between the practice drawings and when they are uploaded.
The site will not look the best but for now, it is close to being functional. The bulk, if not all the content, will be free so long as I can afford it but some of it may require registration (for example comments).
March 2022