SpoonChallenge and 1500

The Spoon Challenge prompt today (well yesterday but..'Merica time zones ooks it up) was 'landmarks'. So I've drawn some I've seen and some I want to see.

2B Pencil

Had to edit the picture a bit as some of the drawing was too faint.

Did some PvP on my Paladin Daseep last night, had a blast and finally hit 1500 rating, well for one game at least. Have to say a big thanks to Efteling for carrying me that far haha, also Nerf Russian Monks!

Off to make some nice sweet potato curry for tomorrow's dinner now, will include a recipe and pictures if it turns out well.

Also, if you haven't tried it yet you NEED some Lotus Caramelised Spread £2.29 in Tesco and Vegan. Trust me, you want to try this.

My Dream Map

Today's, well last night's actually Spoon Challenge Prompt was Map Legend. I found this one quite hard to grasp. My favourite maps are from Tolkien, Dragonlance, The Belgariad and a Game of Thrones. So I've bent the rules a bit here, although I will draw a map of my own making some other time with a 'legend' as they call it, which I think is the same as a key. I wanted to draw the most amazing beautiful map there is. So here is my dream map.

Water colour pencils and felt tip pens

You may have to click the image to see what I've done here (haha). My dream map is Earth, I actually got quite emotional doing this one. Let me tell you why Earth. This planet is beautiful, there are so many places and things I want to see, the Northern Light's in Norway, Mount. Fuji, Thailand, Botswana, India, The Pyramids, China, the Lake and Peak Districts in England, Ireland, New York, Peru, oh so many amazing places I need to see. In my dreams however, the Earth is one, one big country with no war, no religion, were people do not go hungry and children are loved and animals are free. The only symbols needed on my map are peace and love. So I leave today's post with the words of the wonderful John Lennon:

Imagine there is no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you will join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You, you may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you will join us

And the world will live as 

one

Spoon Challenge, Arenas and PvP Woes

Today's Spoon Challenge prompt is Taxi, I spent ages doing a picture and went to take a photo of it and the damn thing fell behind the fire  because at 5am I took the picture out of the book and my brain wasn't working. Wib was not impressed.

Well, today's picture looks like yesterday's one, it's not the same one though. I just couldn't go through trying to re-do the lost drawing. So here is my taxi.

Charcoal & Coloured Pencil

After an entire day of losing battlegrounds the mighty Efteling logs on and takes my newly dinged warrior into the arena where we met the God of rogues, damn that guy was good, we managed to win one though, well, Efteling did and I replaced my green trinket with a 550ilvl one. Can't wait to do more than be a stun bot.

Spoon Challenge - Skyline.

After trying for hours upon hours trying to draw a skyline with rulers and many colours and funky buildings and hating it, I just gave up and went back to my trusted charcoal and drew some blocks, and actually, I kinda like it. It took about two minutes to complete. Hehehe 

So here it is, my Skyline with purple stars.

Warcraft, Arches and Books.

So, I spent the weekend playing WoW, yay to having WoW back again. And I've got my Orc warrior to 90 after a GM had to bring her back from the Nether. And she's been doing some PvP....badly. Newly dinged PvP is painful and soul destroying and to make it worse we hardly ever win and play mostly against Russians! You can see from my WoW Armoury just how painful. Unlike Defias Brotherhood where I've been doing most of my PvP, Dragonblight is a dead/dying server, so I'm guildless and maybe in the worst horde battlegroup there is. But, it's a challenge.

With no Spoonflower prompt again today *sadface* I decided to take some inspiration from my new book on fantasy architecture, so here is my take on a Byzantinian keyhole arch.

Excuse the squiggle in the middle that was me attempting and failing to make it look like there was something through the arch. And I'm not trying to be pretentious in explaining the drawing now, it's just I put a lot of thought into it and would like to share my arch, which I know is not a good drawing but hopefully you'll see what I was trying to do.  Although Eastern in design I wanted to give the arch a Celtic and Pagan look. So I added a figure of eight pattern to surround the arch, I was going to do triquetras but that is beyond my capabilities, anyway, I added the three moon phases and stars near the top, which you can see better in the next photograph. The circle part of the arch is being held by a crude Earth Mother figure, although usually she has the Earth in her stomach or womb, I didn't think it would work so well with this arch.

So um, yea, that's what I've been up to today.

I've also finished reading all of the Belgariad books and the spin offs. I'm kind of gutted as I've come to love Polgara and Belgarath, but I'm sticking to David Eddings for now and I'm reading the Elenium series, so far so good, but I'm already missing Polgara.

   

Fish and Clouds and Warcraft

Bit of a quick one tonight as it's late.

Today's Spoon Challenge is Fish So I decided to try and draw some koi, I love watching them in the monkey house at Dudley Zoo so I looked online for some pictures. Anyway, here is my attempt, I'm not very happy with it but it's done now at least.

Charcoal and watercolour pencil (unwatercoloured)

I saw an awesome cloud earlier and tried to take a picture of it, again I didn't do very well, I need to learn how to change the lighting and stuff on my camera. Anyway I hope you can see the amazing colours I was TRYING to get.

Taken on Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

And lastly, I managed to talk Wibby into giving me a month on WoW, so I've been messing about on some of my lowbie characters. I love my baby dwarf warrior. A Dutch pal and I went through a phase of  testing out the PvP on different servers, but I think Lilburn the Dwarf might stick, it's quite nice seeing Defias Brotherhood from the alliance side too. 

Spoon Challenge- Cats

I may do another cat picture tomorrow, I want to do something with colours too. But it depends on how Wibby is doing really. Seems he is getting worse, I suck at looking after him too though, I've known him since 1999 and never seen him poorly before.

Anyway, here is my picture. I really enjoyed using the charcoal for the first time

Charcoal and watercolour pencil

Photo taken by me 17/03/14

Daseep is a Sumatran tiger at Dudley Zoo, and was recently the poster child for Global Tiger Day, I am also one of her adopters. Although my charcoal drawing doesn't really look like her, (I just do not have the skill to copy her markings although I did try) she was my inspiration for this drawing. The 'squiggle' next to the eye is Chinese for tiger.

I adore tigers, I am tiger crazy, with the small Sumatrans like Daseep here my favourite. But they are so rare now, with poachers and the destruction of their habitats (this is why we stay away from palm oil kids) in as little as 20 years there may not be ANY tigers left. I will write a piece on this soon, but for now I urge you to read this website http://www.21stcenturytiger.org/ for more information on tigers and what this wonderful charity are doing to try and ensure they do not become extinct. 

What Hungry Fat Vegans Eat and Over Spending in W.H. Smiths

Had the best brunch ever today, I really should not go shopping when I'm hungry. I can't usually have breakfasts in cafes or pubs as the 'vegetarian' option usually includes Quorn 'meat' and butter. Quorn is not vegan (booo) so I went to Asda and got some lovely Linda McCartney red onion and rosemary sausages some hash browns and some mushrooms. Happy days.

LM Sausages £2, Mushrooms 99p, Hash Browns £1 ASDA

I couldn't finish it, and my usual food hoover is still unwell, so I'll re-heat it tomorrow and have it again.

I spent too much money in W.H. Smith, which was the whole point of my trip to Halesowen today, back to school sales are win. I spent far too long on the self service 'express till' (express my arse) and managed to scan one of my books two times, which meant I had to go back to the shop five minutes later when I noticed the receipt. Luckily the guy in there was really nice and I got my money back for the books I didn't have. Anyway, here is what I got, because ya know, I like taking photos.

Spoon Challenge Beetles!

Urrgghhh I HATE bugs, beetles and insects so I Hels'd up today's drawing. I tried really hard on this yet it still looks like it's done by a five year old. *sigh* I really do want to get better at this. If I'm feeling fully fighting fit tomorrow's Spoon Challenge will be done in acrylics.

So here it is, Beetles my way.

Dinner Super Comforting Stew.

So, I'm not really one for taking pictures of food and I see how I suck at taking food pictures! But I'm really pleased with how my super comfort stew turned out. Wibby and I have been a bit under the weather the last few days and I finally have my appetite back, although Rob hasn't yet (yay more stew for me!).
So I will share my recipe (although it was just stuff that needed using up) and show you what mine looked like. If you decide to make it (I highly recommend it) just add or take stuff out to suit your taste, it's all about healthy comfort food.

Super Vegan Stew Hels Style

Ingredients:

1 Sweet Potato, diced

1 onion, chopped 

1 carrot, thinly sliced 

1 leek, thinly sliced

1 stick of celery, thinly sliced

1 parsnip, chopped

1 red or yellow pepper, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

A tin of Chickpeas

A small tin of chopped tomatoes
A good handful of spinach
120g (ish, or a suitable portion) of quinoa
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp English mustard
Boiling water
Vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
1,  Lightly fry the onion and leek in a drop of olive oil until translucent.
2, Add the carrot, sweet potato, celery, pepper and parsnip and allow to soften (around 10 mins)
3, Add the garlic, cumin, ginger and mustard and stir.
4. Add the chickpeas, tin of tomatoes and stir into the mixture (it will start smelling awesome at this point). Cover the stew in boiling water/veg stock so it just covers all the vegetable and allow to simmer for 30-45 mins. Add the spinach 2-3 minutes before serving
5, Add the quinoa to a pint of boiling vegetable stock, simmer until the water has gone (around 15 mins)
6, Put some of the Quinoa into the stew and use the rest as a side dish.
7, Enjoy :)

Another Hedgehog.

So I've made a new tap dancing Hedgehog because the other one needed a top hat and some stage lighting soooo, here is the 'revised version' because someone liked this better than the one that took me hours to draw.

My second Spoon Challenge

So today's spoon challenge is to do a hedgehog. I thought I'd try my watercolour pencils again without much success. So to keep it short and sweet, here is my attempt at a hedgehog and a cartoon hedgehog.

Making A Mess

So my new curtains are up, they're a lot wider than I need so I need some tie backs for them. However getting my  room the way I want it is starting to get really expensive, so I decided to make some tie backs out of hemp, paper/card some beads and good ole mod podge. I'm really pleased with how they came out.

I mixed up some of my acrylic paints to get the colours I wanted and painted some thick paper, hooped one end of the hemp string and rolled the paper around the string. I separated the paper and beads by doing a simple knot and ended with another loop at the other end. Now I just need some hoops from B&Q tomorrow. I'm also waiting on amazon to send my purple and pink hemp out so I can make the rest in other colours.

The Spoon Challenge

So last night after a chat with Deb I learned about the spoon challenge SpoonChallenge A Month Of Drawing what a cool idea! What better way to learn to draw stuff than by being sent a daily challenge? After a trip to Halesowen I got some of those watercolour pencils, I actually went for some new brushes for my acrylics but the pencils were half price and seemed cool, I always liked colouring in as a kid. Sadly I've missed quite a few days of the challenge, but no time like the present to get started. Today's challenge was to draw a platypus. I wanted to make mine a tribal hippy platypus, but I've not found a way to layer colours with these pencils, if they can actually be layered. Wow I have so much to learn.

Anyway here's my hippy but not tribal attempt at drawing a platypus in an orange sea, I wanted to make a kind of tie dye effect with pinks and purples and green on it's body but just couldn't figure it out.

So, a Blog huh?

Well, about time I got a hobby.

I've always wanted to be one of those people that can just make stuff. However, I can't knit, I can't sew, I can't draw, and until a few days ago I'd never done painting. I've always wanted to be good at crafting, but I'm just not. But I am hoping I can learn.

I got some cheap acrylic paints from Wilko http://www.wilko.com/reeves-acrylic-tube-set-12pk/invt/0331498, some brushes from the 99p shop and I ended up making this:

A3, acrylic on canvas in really bad light by a crap photographer. 

While it's no masterpiece and I still feel it's missing something, and some bits look really stupid, it's the first thing I've ever painted so I'll give myself a little pat on the back.

So the purpose of this blog, my life is changing, for the better (much better) and I want to learn about crafting and art, photography and good healthy vegan cooking and so much more. And although, no one is going to read or see this blog it's just a little bit of the web where I can stick my random mutterings and pictures and one day see if I have progressed at all. Who knows maybe I'll get good at something.