catching up with AEDM day 10 and Sketchbook Challenge

It's a very special Remembrance Day today as here in the UK we remember those in our armed forces who give or have given their lives in the line of duty at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011.

Yesterday and today finds me poorly at home with some kind of nasty cold that has settled on my chest.  Yesterday was ok, doing a bit of blog hopping in the morning, but then the internet went down and didn't come back on 'til about half an hour ago today when I finally phoned our provider (turns out we have a broken modem) and he sorted it out for me.

So without the internet I sat in bed doing some blind contour drawings.  For these you draw around the image without looking at the paper, only looking at the image, and use a single line.  I couldn't use a real life picture of a seahorse to draw from (how much do we rely on google images!!!) so used this one, which I just LoVe:

Unfortunately I'd printed it out for my ideas journal and not noted properly where I found it!  Sorry!

This idea is from Carla Sonheim's fantastic book 'Drawing Lab' which I find I go back to so much for ideas to get me drawing.  Part-way through drawing some smaller versions of the seahorse I realised I could google an image on my phone!!!  I also noticed how like dragons seahorses are, certainly around the head area anyway.  No wonder I like them, I love dragons!!!

I then chose an image I liked, copied it and started some mad doodling.  I'll add some colour at another time. All this was so taxing I then slept for 6 hours!!!  I'm desperate to have a go at free-machine embroidering a seahorse but need some painkillers first :(  I'll share day 11's AED a bit later!

ps Isn't YouTube fab sometimes?  I have absolutely no need for daytime tv when I'm poorly...