Sketch Cards

Hey Kids, 

Satch here. For our bestie bucket list, one of the things we have to do it learn to draw three new things. This one was actually my idea when Jacklin and I were originally writing the list for Salt, because I had spent that evening learning how to draw Winnie-the-Pooh, because, you know, I'm just so rock and roll. 

Therefore this one was a bit easy for me because I can already draw a pretty cracking Pooh bear, and pretty much any superhero because you don't have to do the eyes, but I thought I'd challenge myself to do three new things. I've still got one thing to do but I have learnt to draw a scruffy dog, and the back of Ryan Gosling! Even better, I've turned them into crafts! 

 I don't know if you've seen Drive, but Ryan Gosling (among doing a cracking acting performance) is HOT in that film! When a group of us were watching it a few weeks ago, my cousin Nimz got particularly excited about this 10 seconds of footage where you see Ryan's lovely back as he's carrying a cute little kid. Needless to say, we all fell in love with him a bit more after this film, and so I thought I'd recreate the moment for Nimz's birthday card.

Here's a close-up. The spanish kid went a bit gammy, so we're not counting that as one of my learning to draw things, but let's be honest, that's not the bit we care about, is it?  

The other one I've done since bucket-listing was Cobb's Valentines Day card. Neither of us are particularly gushy and you just can't find a good joke card these days so I thought I'd draw him a picture of something he loves more than me: shaggy dogs! 

As you can see, I made my dog a bit more smiley and he ended up with a slightly disproportionate head than the original, but I still like it.

Drawing a picture on a home-made birthday card, or as a present, is a great idea because it's cheap and has that personal touch, especially if you have friends who are a bit unusual and difficult to shop for. The personal touch also means you don't worry about writing a personal message so much inside, because the person can see the effort you've gone to already (which is great because I never know what to write!) 

Here are some other of my sketch cards/presents from days gone by for inspiration: 

This one was for my Mum's birthday, it's her favourite things; tea, books and piano.

This one was for my Dad, who is a big Donald fan.

This was for my friend Kay who is a little bit obsessed with Alice in Wonderland!

Even if you're not the best sketcher in the world (is sketcher a word?) if you get your image of choice up on your laptop, the lit-up screen makes things very easy to trace (which, I'll admit, I did do on the Donald Duck card - but only becasue I was in a terrible hurry!) Apart from Alice, I copied mine from other pictures which can help with details and proportions and stuff.

In terms of what to draw, I'm not so good on faces and hands so I tend to go for objects, cartoon characters or superheroes, and lots of websites give you instructions of how to draw them, if you're not too keen on just making it up from memory or copying it from a picture. But really, the sky's the limit, so get sketching!

Until next time, Kids. 
Satch
x