After reading your post about your passionate pursuit of learning about the medicinal values of plants which I found fascinating, I wrote down a list of things that I'm passionate about doing - things that bring me joy, where I feel my spirit and soul smiling. It's quite a list and I don't get to do most of them nearly often enough, but when I do, I try to make it count.
Illuminated Lettering
So today I chose to divulge a bit about linework, sketching and typography. Since I was a kid, I had a bit of an addiction to collecting stationery. This got progressively better worse as I got older and then I made this stupid discovery into the world of scrapbooking.
Oh gosh, I probably could have financed a mortgage on that addiction 😇 I'm not even kidding now. I had a set of stamps made from my sketches of Madagascan animals after I went there on holiday in 2007. What a memorable trip that was! My buddy Kareemah and I had this on our bucketlists and it was freaking spectacular. That deserves it's own post.
Penmanship - Typography & Calligraphy
I have always admired (coveted) a good pen. There was a Waterman Pen shop in Cavendish Square that I used to window shop at (read: drool over pens in the front window and annoy the shop assistants when I was a kid) - I only bought my first real calligraphy pen when I was in England in 2001. I wrote this poem from one of my favourite books with that pen.
There is nothing quite like the feeling I get after doing intricate line work of a sketch or a word in typography and looking at it with satisfaction. These days I don't get to do it much unfortunately, but these are some of the ones I did over the last few years.
Heraldry & Mythology
A family crest I created from different elements of a family history - It took hours of research into heraldry and the family tree to come up with a combination that worked. I was really pleased with the result in the end.
Illuminated lettering is a dying art but I'll keep it alive as long as I can and I hope that with Lory's love of creativity and drawing that I can pass down some skills and tools to her too if she'd like that.
Many of my creations are mythological in nature, I'm a bit of a weirdo like that. None of these have any real use case I suppose other than being pretty and that I like them, but they fill me with so much happiness when I get to draw them, it's a rather magical process to me.
All photographs are my own of original sketches and linework.
I'd like to invite @nineclaws to this contest as I know she has a lot of passion and love for digital art and photography.