Life: as I See it - my Drawings edition

Dear Reader,

As I was rummaging through the stack of folders under my desk, I found my little black portfolio with all my good sketches in it. Then it occured to me that though I write about all sorts of things on this blog, I've never mentioned my drawings. So I decided to take photos of them and put up here for your pleasure and scrutiny.  Mind you, I've never taken a single drawing lesson in my life (any ability I have to draw, I've inherited from my father), so don't expect to find anything of great artistic genious or with any proffessional quality. 

Of course, given my obvious obsession, almost all my sketches feature characters from my own written/planned novels or stories written by my friend, Codename: Pixie. By the way, this is only a small selection of my drawings. I still have many more tucked away between the plastic pages of my display-file. (Make sure you click on the pictures to see all the minute details.)

1) Meet Nabiha, the main character in Life in Conversations (previously known as 'the Big One'):

2) The following drawings are characters from a quartet of fantasy/fiction novels that have been thoroughly planned but not yet written. Essentially, my drawings are of one model who's trying on the different out-fits that I would imagine my characters dressed up in at some point of the book. They're really just to help me get a feel of the characters and help me when it comes to the more descriptive pieces (which I'm not all that good at writing, in my opinion):

Chronicles by Anamika  Book 1: The Legend of Sharon

Chronicles by Anamika  Book 2: The Legend of Eadah

Chronicles by Anamika  Book 3: The Legend of  Buckles

Chronicles by Anamika  Book 4: The Legend of Sirene

3) the next picture is of drawings I'd originally done for my friend Pixie, some 6 years ago now. She was writing a trilogy about these three witches. She had described her characters to me and asked my to make some sketches. I think that after months of planning, she gave up on the project. But I still like her concept and the pictures:

   

4) Here are some more characters, portrayed by the same one-eyed model (Aside: I always seemed to get the second eye wrong so I gave up in trying to draw it right and from then on gave everyone side-poses) 

Imaan Saeed, from a book that does not have a title yet. Ironically, I've also written quite a lot of this story too.

A few more random assortment of characters from different novels/stories

5) The last thing I'm going to add here are some doodles I use to make at the back of my note-books, while sitting in exceptionally boring classes (during Sixth Form) or lectures (during my 1st year). I haven't made any new doodles in years now. I guess it was a phase I grew out of. (Aside: I also had a phase of writing any song lyrics or poetry that I could remember off the top of my head in to the back of my class-work books. And I always wrote them up-side down):

If I were ever to give a title to my doodles, this one would have been called 'Thoughts that Flow' 

These two are pieces from a much bigger drawing but I couldn't get the whole thing to fit into a single picture in my camera without compromising the detail. And with this piece, it really is about the detail rather than the bigger picture. So I decided to just photograph my favourite bits.




















Well I hope you enjoyed this not-so-impressive display of my meagre skills. Let me know what you think and if you want more 'Life: as I see it...' blog posts.

Nida