Living for Light used to be my photography site. And then, at some point when I was too busy to deal with things like updates, spam and the fact that my photographs were hosted on a photosharing site that vanished into the ether, I took it and a few other hobby sites down. I’m not saying I went on instagram (I went on Instagram) but mostly, I stopped taking photographs for a while.
I started drawing about 6-7 years ago. I started because I admitted to myself one day that possibly the reason I was bad at drawing was that I didn’t really do very much of it. My mother bought me a little Cotman watercolour kit in Easons one day, and I discovered that not only could I not draw, I was not exactly good at painting with water colours either. So I ran scared and played with coloured pencils instead.
Most of my art stuff went up on Instagram with a couple of key exceptions: the photography goes up on Flickr, as does the Eurovision project. I got maybe 20 views on a good day on Instagram, okay so I don’t promote much, but I hang around there because there are some great artists there that I really respect, like Alex Hillkurz and Iraville to name the first two that caught my attention. But I don’t get many views there and I have almost no autonomy over how things are presented there. I figure if no one is looking at my stuff, I might as well do it my way, mix in the photographs, some travel writing, and the art, and talk about the relationship between all four. I’ve written some interesting travel memory pieces which just disappear into the ether on the social media channels.
There’s a guy on youtube called Kesh who reckons that really, the social media channels are just the front door to your own blog these days. I remember when blogs were there before social media channels (I laugh in the face of people talking about Instagram ca 2012. I have been writing blogs since like 2003 or so). (well, been lazy about that lately.
So, I take photographs, with various phones and a Canon G7. I love the Canon. It would fit in my handbag if I had a big enough handbag to fit my G7, my sketchbook, my assorted phones and a sketch kit and a few other notebooks.
Eurovision
I draw the Eurovision every year. You can find this on twitter, but the general gist is that you draw the acts in the amount of time it takes to sing their songs. To make it really spicy, I do it on an iPad on Procreate. I am not good at this. You can find them on Flickr (because it was easier to set up sharing from Procreate to Flickr than it was to Instagram). The Collection is here, and you’ll find 2016. 2017, [for some reason I did not do 2018], 2019, [the Eurovision did not happen because of Covid] 2021 and 2022 in these places.
Watercolours and Sketching
I love watercolours. There will be a lot about watercolours here. I also do urban sketching, travel sketching, travel dreams sketching, learning by copying the masters on instagram and pinterest, pencils, ink, markers. You name it. This site is mostly for the art stuff. We will see how that goes.
Travel, travel writing, travel memories.
I like traveling. I like taking photographs, and I like writing about travel in the past. I am not influencer level of travel and I will never try to re-enact Emily in Paris in Paris either. You will not find me styling croissants either.
This is just a place for the travel creative stuff. The stuff I have done, the stuff I want to do, the stuff I draw, the stuff I philosophise about.