The beginning ...

So this is it.

It's the 1st of September 2006 and I'm starting this blog to commemorate me starting on a journey which I hope will bring me a lot of satisfaction and joy. Fingers crossed.

In a way I started this journey when I decided to take time off from the career ladder I was on, back in April 2005, when my contract as a research scientist at Cancer Research UK ended. After a lot of umming and amming (and other interesting sound effects) I decided that I wanted to reconnect with my creative side - which I had been very connected to as a child. I've done bits and bobs in the last year like start on the great book by Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain ; signing up for art, screenprinting and jewellery making classes, and generally trying to do a bit more sketching.

A couple of days ago I bought a lovely book by Danny Gregory called The Creative License which has inspired me to try and document the process: hence this journal. There are also other BIG PLANS in the pipeline, but I'll write about those if and when they come to fruition.

In the meantime, here's a couple of sketches I've done recently...

Sunshine was sitting on the bed with me also sketching and so I decided to have a go at his shirt:


(I still have a fear of drawing faces - something I'm going to have to attack soon)

And yesterday I had a mosey around The British Museum. Their "The Enlightenment" room has a lot of interesting bits of paraphanelia about how people started discovering more about their world. I spotted a lovely brass sextant-thing, and made a wobbly sketch of it:

Here we go .......