Little Book of Amanda

In March of 2021 I realized it was 50 days until Amanda turned  REDACTED  which was precisely the number of pages in this little sketchbook... so I thought I'd draw a picture a day of her until her birthday...  The plan completely fell apart after, like, three days... 

It was the middle of the pandemic and while Amanda was home everyday, and thus there were plenty of opportunities to draw her... there was not a lot of variety in the activities and potential poses... she stood at her desk and worked, or sat and watched TV in the evening... occasionally did some yoga... or played a game! 

I've kept it and occasionally tried to add pictures to it over the years... I've taken it on vacation with us... but most of the pictures seem to have been drawn while she was watching TV, working on her computer or waiting for something. Amanda is a difficult person to draw as she DOES NOT OFTEN SIT STILL!!

I think maybe two of them were drawn from a photo..,?

I've posted some of these on Facebook or Instagram or Bluesky... but somehow not a lot of them have ended up on this blog! So I decided to post a gallery of the whole bunch, now that the book is complete! 

Some of these are not great... MOST of them are not great... But it wasn't meant for publication or anything its just a tiny sketchbook I thought I'd do some doodles in and chose a theme for those doodles.. and when I got close to being done, I thought: I could post these... 

Most of the drawings were done with radiograph pens and watercolour - at lot of the early ones were watercolour pencil, later ones from pan watercolours. there are a few that use markers. The sketchbook itself is very small - 15cm x 15cm (6"x6")

(I don't love the cover... As with my practice with covers in the past, I would just stick whatever stickers I happened to have and some turned out and some just look a mess... this one is more of a mess... The stickers were mostly put on sketchbooks like this - because they look the same, front and back - and the stickers allow me to orient the book right side up before opening it)

I must have torn a page out of it at some point...

Also there is an odd number of pictures as the last page I'd evidently used to test pens and colours on. When I finished the last drawing, I just wrote a little blurb about what the book was about (similar to what's typed above) amongst the scribbles and blobs of colour.