Category: star

My Daughter, My Inspiration.

And here we are my first two pieces and first inspiration.

This inspiration has been a learning curve for me and brought with it a huge realization on many fronts. Firstly I have learnt that it’s much harder than I thought to find the odd five minutes here and there for hobbies when you have a 1-year-old. And the odd five minutes here and there don’t lend to very much creatively and doing it this way means a not so great drawing that took maybe an hour in total max took forever to finish. But what really hit me was holly cow are my drawing skills rusty!!!!!!
And it is that realization that hit me the most. I’m not sure which had more of an effect, the former or the later. But one thing I’m sure about, is that I’m not very impressed with the results.
I thought I was capable of better. But hopefully as this project progresses my skills will improve….I hope.

Anyway enough digressing and back to the real purpose of this blog. This posts inspiration and what resulted from it.

This weeks post is brought to you by the letter S. Specifically my beautiful daughter S. My never-ending source of inspiration and muse who has motivated me to do many things. Such as cook. My husband and anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t cook very often. There are very good reasons behind that. Mostly it’s not something I even average on except for one or two things. But yet at the 6 month mark I was hell-bent on making my own baby food. And then just recently S was part motivation for this entire drawing project. And I don’t mean just this weeks post. I mean the whole thing. I want to be able to show her the many facets of mummy and foster a creative environment for her to grow up in. And to do that I need to actually do the things I love and enjoy and not just say I can do them.
Every day S does something inspiring and new. Yesterday she showed us that just because we think she’s a little too short to reach something doesn’t mean she won’t courtesy of her new “stand on tippy toes skills”. She’s getting closer and closer to walking properly every day and just yesterday I caught her dancing somewhat…well butt shuffling in a bad rhythm to Choo Choo Soul while in her high chair. There’s always something new to wrap my head around and I’m still trying to process that it’s already been over a year since we brought her home. My baby is growing up! And fast!
We’ve been snap happy taking millions of pictures for the memory banks and got as many videos as she would let us catching her doing the latest “cute new thing”. So why now immortalized some our memories in pen and pencil? Is it not appropriate that my motivation be my first inspiration?
Well lets look at the results.

This is my first piece. It’s coloring pencil on paper.

20121023-215901.jpg Drawing number one.

I took inspiration from pointillism for style. Purely for fun. I do like how it looks like a mosaic almost.
And here’s a close up.

20121024-145426.jpg Close up of drawing number one.

You can see in the close up how I did the dots.

20121024-160119.jpg Memories of impending motherhood.

You may be wondering “what’s with the big star?”. Well it’s to signify S’s name. It is “star” although not in English. It seemed appropriate as she is our little twinkle and I’d wish for her upon a star any day. That and we were searching for a beautiful girls name to represent my heritage as she has V’s surname which makes his (or at least part of) very obvious. It was beautiful and not too difficult for an American tongue to pronounce although many still miss-hear it. And bonus was it is very rarely heard of over here. Which is something we wanted as well. Something unique but meaningful to who she is.

20121024-160322.jpg Tiny feet.

Like any mother I have the obligatory thousands of photos. In fact I think I hit well over a thousand by the time S was six months old. When I sat down to start drawing for this post, I looked at the many I have on my phone (don’t you love the technology of today? You can’t fit that many photos in your wallet!), and thought about in what way I wanted to represent my little muse on paper. I knew I wanted to represent my love for her and our bond most of all. Before and after she was born. Had I found more opportunity to concentrate on my drawings, I think I would have ventured more into conveying who S is. Her personality, her loves, and likes. Just generally what its like to live with S. I truly do feel so lucky to be able to call myself her mum and claim her as mine, well ours.

But that’s enough gushing. As I said earlier I did do two drawings. The second one (shown bellow) was done in pencil and black pen. This drawing I was aiming for was a picture to convey what impending motherhood felt like for me and how I feel about it now. Waiting for S to finish cooking and greet us in the big wide world. Again I’m not that impressed with how it turned out. It was pretty rushed and more worthy of the title doodle than drawing.

20121029-141350.jpg Drawing number two.

And a close up of drawing number two. I did swirls for the sky instead of dots like before. The swirls were strangely relaxing to do. Must have been the monotony. Although not as neat as I’d have liked due to me rushing it.

20121029-141534.jpg Close up of drawing number two.

And I guess that concludes my first inspiration post. I’ll leave you to mull on what you have seen and read. While I go off to draw some more (hopefully with improvement) for a new post.

Another preview, apology and an addendum.

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The month is almost up, both mine and our daughter S’s birthdays are quickly approaching. They are both “milestone” birthdays at that. So we are busy, busy, busy, what with preparing to celebrate as well as looking after Soon to be toddler. As a result I’m still working on my first inspiration. Sorry guys I have any pictures of finished work for you this post. I currently have three different pieces on the go at the same time. The close-ups above and below are from the same piece. Not my usual method or style, I thought I’d try something different. Hoping it works out. I must say it’s calming to draw this way. Though more time-consuming. It reminds me very much of roman mosaics as well as the obvious Pointillism style.
Any guesses as to my current inspiration?

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I hadn’t intended on posting again without at least one or two finished pieces to show you. However I didn’t think it would take me so long to finish at least one piece. I’m not by any means promising you or claiming I’m creating a masterpiece (far from it) but I haven’t found many spare minutes here and there to sit down and draw these past few weeks. I thought I better at least give you an update I mean I can’t let my first month go by with just one blog post. Could I?

And this brings me to the addendum. When I set forth this project I didn’t specify at least for myself a goal for how often I would post, or how many pieces I would create per post. I thought being flexible would be better. That way I wouldn’t feel rushed, nor would it seem out-of-place if I posted more frequently should the creativity flow more quickly at one time or another. Being flexible in my project seemed like a better way to fit it into my day-to-day life as mummy. Because let’s be honest S is numero UNO in order of getting things done. She needs me I’m there, she needs it, I’m doing it. Hovering over her like a honey bee on a flower……..ok maybe a helicopter over a freeway. The bumble bee thing just sounded prettier. Yes I admit it! My names Hannah and I’m a helicopter parent! I can also be described as an “attached parent”. Although I’ve never read the book nor remember the author’s name for that matter but from what I gather I do fair few things this “expert” encourages.

Ok so now I’ve held my hand up and admitted my guilt, time to move on to a solution. Clearly just a little structure will go a long way. I need to give myself a posting schedule at the very least. Because I’m busy with S I’m not going to go over board. I need to be pragmatic and honest with what I can achieve. But I would still like to maintain some flexibility because ever the optimist there may in fact be a week I can post multiple times! But then there’s also, I’m sure going to be weeks where it’s going to be even more difficult.

So let’s see………

let’s start with how many pieces of work should I promise per post? I’m going to stick with at least one. Yeah it may seem a cop-out or easy way out but I’ll more likely achieve one piece per inspiration more frequently than a larger number thus being more likely to be able to promise more frequent posts. However I reserve the opportunity to post as many above that minimum as I see fit should the creative juices really flow.

So now the bigger question.

How often should I post? Now this is tricky, I need to choose a frequency that is achievable in my busy schedule, yet enough so as to keep this blog entertaining. Once a month just isn’t going to cut it! I don’t want to bore you. But I still need to take into account I need to not just sit and write a post but also create at least one piece of work based on my day-to-day life experiences and inspirations.

What would be a happy medium? Is every two weeks too long for readers to wait? Or would once a week be too tight for my schedule? I want to give myself the opportunity to create something more than just scribbles and doodles. I’m not promising you I never will submit scribbles and doodles I’m just saying once or twice it would be nice to have the time to create something awesome.
So with that in mind I think I’ll give myself a bi weekly minimum target. No matter what I will post. Whether be it an update or hopefully some inspiration to share with you!

A New Blog

Hello and welcome to my arty blog. My name is Hannah, I live with my wonderful husband V and my beautiful daughter S. I’m a stay at home mum who loves design, art and fashion of which I’ve studied. I’m also an expat from the other side of the pond (Kent, U.K.), but now reside on the West Coast of U.S.A.

Inspired Me Studio blog is less a blog more a diary…scrap that it’s a sketchbook. Or rather a sketchbook diary. And it’s also a challenge. A challenge I’ve set for myself and to be shared with you all.

There’s a lot of inspiration in this world, and I intend to embrace as much as I can. And be open to any creativity that may follow it.

I love to be creative. I love to paint, sew, draw, design and this will be my get creative project. My excuse to squeeze in some extra time to paint or draw or whatever takes my fancy.

Whenever I’m inspired by something in my day to day life I will use that inspiration to creative something. An art piece or two, or more. Which I will then share with you all on here. I’m going to set myself a target number of which I will aspire to. It’s 10411. It’s not a random number, and it’s probably going to take forever to reach if I do ever manage to get there. But I’ll have fun trying and counting my way there.

It’s inspired by my beautiful daughter, who inspired me to do this “art project”. She inspires me in so many ways. But mostly she opens my eyes to the beauty of the world and life. And makes me realise more so, how much I want to remember every day spent on this earth that she is on. I’m not really a writer (which is I’m sure obvious from this page), but this diary will be a fun way to look back at our days together. It will be a fun did you know your mother did” story to tell her. I will have fun making it and I hope you all have fun reading it.

For this posts imagery, I’m going leave with you with a work in progress. It’s the first one. A tidbit of my next post. hopefully I’ll be happy with it and it will make it to my next post. Perhaps it may even have company.
Enjoy

Hannah

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