Camping at Loch Tay

Sooo, I know I said I'll try to post every Sunday, but I thought I'd throw in an extra post because today I also published a Facebook page and it's all new and exciting and we went camping last weekend.

Day 1

The plan was to get up early and leave early on Friday morning, but, because of my faffing about, it didn't happen. We planned to drive to Loch Tay and find a spot to wild camp there (because that is the best way to camp). It is a VERY long loch, with VERY few spots to wild camp, specifically two. After driving around the whole thing roughly 1.5 times we finally settled on a spot and it was actually really pretty.

But then a bunch of loud, and soon drunk, fishermen showed up and took the spot next to us. We like people, but not right next to us and not while we're camping. So we just sat there in the dark, because it was too damp to make a fire, mumbling and raging at the fishermen because they had no sense of personal space.

There was, however, a super exciting and friendly duck. He figured out that if he got close enough and hung around, I couldn't resist his charms and would feed him a constant stream of bread. I named him Albert. Or Alfred. I'm not really sure. Paul just went along with it.

Day 2

The next day we tried to get up and leave the tent reasonably early, but of course it didn't happen (again). Around midday we finally got to a town called Killin. We needed to buy bread because I'd fed everything we brought to the ducks (a bunch of them showed up and hung around with Albert / Alfred). There was a marathon / half marathon / 10k run happening (I'm not sure which). There were lots of happy people and lots of really great dogs. We then made our way to Ben Lawers. Fun fact, the main walk up the hill actually involved two munros - Beinn Ghlas (1103m) and Ben Lawers (1214m). I thought I was going to die, as per usual, but the views at the top weren't half bad.

I think my favourite bit was having a lie down on lovely soft moss on the way back. When we came back to the tent we were knackered, but managed to get a fire going. The fishermen were loud again.

Day 3

The weather was nice and we went to the Falls of Acharn. They were really pretty. We took a different path back and found a nice little playground in town. We tried all the swingy and climby things and I found out my bottom was too large for the kids' swing. Then Paul stepped into dog poo and I had to get it off his boot with a stick.

We got back to the tent and decided to walk 3 miles to Killin to go the pub. I suggested we should move there and changed my mind five minutes later because it was too full of tourists. The pub was called The Falls of Dochart. They had an ale named after the pub (or the actual falls, which were right across the street) and it was pretty good. The pub itself was really cool and there were two great dogs there. They were hidding under tables, though, and we didn't see them until we moved seats twice.

I may have been slightly tipsy after we left the pub and I got terrible hiccups. When I was little my mum told me that you could get rid of them standing in a swallow's pose, i.e. on one leg with your arms up in the air. So I was doing that on the side of the ride, while having a heart-to-heart with Paul and cars driving by. I'm sure they enjoyed the view. When we came back to the tent the fishermen were gone and instead of them there was a great couple with an even greater dog. The guy helped us start our fire. I think his name was Allan, but I could be wrong.

Day 4

I started off the next morning feeling a bit fragile. But it was sunny, the loch looked beautiful and the ducks were back. We slowly packed up and drove home. We made a coffee stop in Aberfeldy. I decided I want to move there.

Okay bye!

Drawing Process and a Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog!

I decided not to do a separate intro post, but if you'd like to know a little bit about me head over to the About page. Instead I thought what better way to start than to show my drawing process of the little illustrated me I drew for the about page.

I did a quick sketch to see what angle, hairstyle and outfit I'd like for the drawing. I suddenly forgot how to draw a face and I realised I drew the head way too large. So I drew a bunch of floating heads to find the right face. I settled on the one in the bottom right corner, so I coloured it in.

I then made a proper sketch, but I (unsurprisingly) started too low down and the feet didn't fit in, so I had to retrace it using my lightbox, a.k.a a window. I ended up with a nice clean sketch.

Then it was watercolour time. I am currently using a Winsor & Newton cotman water colours sketcher's pocket box. Which is basically just a basic wee travel watercolour set, but the paint is great quality. I started with a thin layer of very diluted paint, waited for it to dry before I did another layer, and then another layer, and another layer and so on to create shadows and highlights, until I was happy with the colours.

Layer 1

Layers 2 & 3

Layer 4 and onwards

When all that was done I made my special mix of Winsor & Newton peat brown ink and generic Koh-I-Noor black ink in a super professional mixing dish (a juice bottle cap). I used it to add the outline and some detail. I used white acrylic paint and coloured pencils to finish it off.

I ended up with a picture like this:

If you scroll back to the top you'll see that I used the original sketch without the feet to scribble my colour palette as well as to write out: "Oh hey there!". I still need a lot of practice...

I spent A LOT of time on this.I just wanted to make it good considering it was going to be a permanent part of the blog. Hopefully soon I'll improve and think it's totally crap and want to redraw it, but for now, I like it.

Okay, bye!