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Honestly, I don’t know why I bother making plans any more…

As the nights draw in, a chill in the air and a blaze of autumn colour usually heralds my annual failure to complete Inktober because I’m not necessarily in love with the prompts and I’m easily bored. This year, still a bit giddy after completing the 100 Day Project, I decided to make things more interesting/challenging for myself by attempting a #Halloweaselchallenge to do an animal themed drawing every day, using two prompts from Inktober, Drawloween and Handcrafted Uniquely, a fabulous community of artists on Facebook.

It was all going brilliantly. It really was. Look! Here are some drawings I did and the prompts I used:

  • Crystal/Witch Sandie (with Labradorite crystal ball, obvs).
  • Lola in her Ghost/Suit
  • Toadstool/Vessel, featuring my good friend ‘Norty’ Mosca!
  • Night Circus/Bat could only be handsome ringmaster Leonardo Basset
  • Spirit/Raven
  • Cat/Moon with my favourite black cat, Squeak.

Then we noticed that a worryingly firm lump had appeared on one side of Lola’s belly, and the rest of October was all about fixing a wonky dog.

To put this into context, we rehomed Lola and her sister Ruby in 2019 after they lost their owner and ended up in rescue. It soon became obvious that, although they had clearly been loved to bits, they both had some health issues. Despite doing everything we possibly could to save her, we lost poor Ruby to ‘leaky gut syndrome’ in December 2020. In 2018 we lost our beautiful Lab/Collie boy, Boswell, very suddenly, to kidney cancer. They were both just shy of ten years old. Lola turns ten in February.

Long, panicky story short, we whisked her to the vet for a scan and she came back minus her spleen and 1.6kgs of tumour. Here she is getting vetty snuggles, and wondering what the flip heck happened:

” Excuse me? I only came here for a bit of fuss and a gravy bone”…

Thankfully, tests confirmed the tumour was benign and she’s absolutely fine now. Once again, I cannot say enough nice things about our wonderful vet, ‘Auntie Sarah'(!), at Tern Vets in Market Drayton. She has looked after all our dogs with exceptional care and compassion since we moved here and we are very, VERY grateful to her.

Lola has made an amazing recovery and clearly feels much better for getting rid of the extra cargo. We noticed her belly was quite round and very firm when we first adopted her, but she has never shown any symptoms even when examined at the vet. I’m just glad we caught this before it caused anything catastrophic. The X ray she had prior to surgery also showed the start of some degeneration in her spine, so we’ll be looking after that too.

Tanky Dog don’t care though. She is living her best life and as long as she’s happy, that’s all that matters.

It’s November now and I have No Plans Whatsoever. Fool me once, and so on. Let’s just wing the rest of 2021 from here.

Bonus Music Video

‘Time of the Season’ was originally recorded by The Zombies, but I love this cover by Tanya Donelly.

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Look at me keeping up with #the100DayProject like a champ! And not keeping up with social media at all… Oh well, if something’s got to give it’s better that way round. Here’s another update on my 100 Days of Women in Music, which I’m also using as a hashtag for the project on Twitter and Instagram. I’m so pleased that I’m still enthusiastic about the whole thing and I’ll definitely be carrying on and seeing where it ends up after the 100 days.

I’ve now finished eleven drawings, an average of one every three days, which is pretty good going. Here’s the one I was just starting when I last blogged:

I loved doing this. ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, best known for being in The Mamas & the Papas in the mid 1960s. She has been one of my favourite singers since I was a little girl. Even before I developed a love of California folk-rock, I saw her playing a character called Witch Hazel in the 1970 film version of an unhinged US children’s show called HR Pufnstuf. Don’t do drugs kids, there’s no need! You can safely experience all the thrills of not knowing what the flipping heck is going on or why by watching the video clip below…

I actually did a really quick sketch of her character for Inktober a few years ago.

After that I struggled a bit. I did two sketches I wasn’t entirely happy with, but I’m taking a deep breath and sharing them anyway because as well as commitment, this project is also about about sharing your ‘process’. I’m not unhappy with them exactly, but I think the shading on both is a little overdone, probably because I found myself thinking about how many drawings I might manage in the hundred days and subconsciously rushing to finish.

  • Kathleen Hanna
  • Ani DiFranco

That’s part of the reason I committed to black and white ink drawings though, at least or this first bit of the project. There’s nowhere to hide. I’d already planned to do more than one picture of both, and I’m still improving my rusty people-drawing skills, so I’m happy as long as I’m generally going in the right direction. This week I had a stern talk with myself, slowed down, gave myself lots of detail to faff with and waddya know… I’m much happier with this!

Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Note to self: no more 1980s fishnet gloves. I was seeing those in my sleep. I’ve drawn a lot of dark hair recently too, maybe I’ll go for someone bald next? I have a couple of candidates for that.

Bonus Music Video

Seeing as I shared the Witch Hazel clip, I think it’s only fair that this week’s video is Cass singing live. Not the best quality visuals but that voice still give me goosebumps.

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Quick update on my sketches for #the100DayProject. The first four drawings I did are on my previous blog entry, which I utterly failed to publicise, because… well, I’m a bit rubbish at that sort of stuff. I’m doing 100 Days of Women in Music (which I’m also using as a hashtag for the project on Twitter and Instagram).

First up last week was Joan Armatrading. Took me two attempts, but I was really pleased with this in the end:

Over the weekend I did Shirley Manson, lead singer of Garbage. I fancied doing something a bit looser/sketchier and managed to get this finished over a couple of sessions.

I was speaking to a friend in the US on Sunday night (at about 1am, when Luce and I had celebrated Valentine’s Day with a disgraceful amount of Belgian beer) and I asked who she’d like to see me do next. She suggested Joan Jett, so I embarked on this.

I stupidly pushed myself to get it finished on Wednesday, so of course my back said “no” and it ended up taking me most of the week… Will I ever learn? Probably not. But hey, Joan looks good and it really boosted my confidence.

Yesterday I started on someone who has been one of my favourite singers since I was very small… as well as being in a really well known California folk-rock group, she played a witch in a US children’s show in the 60s. Any guesses? Go on, I’ll be *thrilled* if anyone gets it right!

Bonus Music Video

Only one song it could be this week…

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Ten days into #the100dayproject and I am having an absolute blast! After much umm-ing and aah-ing, I finally decided on 100 days of Women in Music.

Fondly (and humorously) known here at Poochweasel Towers as my ‘rock chicks project’, I’ve been wanting to do something like this for ages. Last year I indulged myself with a few days of graphite pencil drawing, but then last year went nuts and I never got any further…

Vi Subversa of the Poison Girls. I still want to be Vi when I grow up.

I like to set myself a challenge and I rarely draw people. I’ve chosen to start with ink drawings, even though I’ve been doing a lot recently, because ink is less forgiving than graphite so it requires some bravery and confidence. It also stops me faffing about with shading for days, just because it’s comforting… the whole idea is to get out of my comfort zone and improve my rusty people-drawing skills.

It’s also about making a plan and sticking to it. The idea of the 100 day project is to commit to something creative, work on it for at least 10 minutes a day for 100 days and share your process online. I started by making a list of 100(ish) women who have been influential/important to me, musically. It’s a very personal list, so there will be a lot of punk/post-punk, Riot Grrls and alternative/indie in there and it will most certainly reflect the fact that I worked for Our Price Records in the 1980s.

My first couple of drawings were a bit small and tentative. Here are PJ Harvey and Poly Styrene. I started Poly on a similar scale to PJ, then made the decision to start again and concentrate on her face.

At that point I realised I’d been putting unnecessary pressure on myself by trying to produce a finished drawing every day. I already do a lot of quick sketches and I reminded myself that this was about working on something every day and sharing the process. I won’t end up with 100 drawings, but this is only the start of my Women in Music project.

Having decided that doing larger, more detailed drawings was a good decision, I embarked on Joni Mitchell (a young Joni; I’m going to have to draw several of these women at different ages). I was much happier with this:

A couple of days ago I finished (legendary rock drummer) Patty Schemel. I think I’m already seeing some improvement and I’m starting to feel confident again. More importantly, I’m having fun!

Today I’m finishing Joan Armatrading, I’ll share that one next week. Now I’ve just got to keep on going. 10 days down, 90 to go… If anyone else is doing the challenge, I’d love to see what you’re up to. Come and talk to me!

Bonus Music Video

If you’d like to know a bit more about Patty Schemel, I love this (4 minute) video of her talking about how she started out as a drummer. And here she is hitting stuff: