My 2018 - This is my Hobby: Drawing and Painting

Hello dear Steemians,

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When I saw this contest organized by @anomadsoul, I immediately decided to take part, my hobby is Drawing and Painting and this is something I re-started after 17 years of pause.

Before I start talking about it I would like to share my Oil on canvas painting that I have done shortly before Christmas and it is called „Into a Storm“:

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Into a Storm - Oil painting by @Stef1

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Drawing and Painting as Hobby:

I think every child since he is able to crawl and reach something, who just spoiled his hands or fingers in anything like chocolates, carrot puree or dirt and tries to clean it by wiping on his shirt or may be expensive clothes of his parents or may be on nice sofa, already becomes an artist.

Children like to make painting with anything what they have.

My parents told me that when I was 3 y. o. and I had colored the wallpaper in my room in all the colors of rainbow. Luckily it had already some pictures of teddy-bears and I thought that they would be happy to have rainbow.

Since then my parents made sure that I have a table with sketch block and pencils right there.

When I was a bit older I always saw my father drawing although he was not an artists by profession but by heart, I loved seeing him doing beautiful portraits and that raised my passion to portraits. While in school I continued drawing but it was just for spare time and school lessons.

From there on, for next 17 years, I have not done any drawings or paintings, because I went to University to study the profession that I love very much and still doing with a lot of dedication and joy. It has nothing to do with art.

Why I re-started my Hobby:

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Last year in August 2017, my family joined Steemit, the greatest things about that was that people could share all their interests, hobbies and thoughts.

I presented in my first post a couple of my simple works done last few years just to see what people think, because I knew that my family always support me but nobody else has seen my works prior to that. I have immediately received very supporting comments and that triggered the Re-START button for my long forgotten art works.

My hobby I exercise every day, usually evening and of course weekends, but my family is priority and we do what we would like to do together in first instance and, or course, for the rest of my weekend I use for my art, that brings me into the beautiful world of my childhood.
There is always something triggering the topics for my drawing it could be just a nice action movie, beautiful actors, events like Valentine day and Halloween or my family members like my little niece who loves drawing.

Every time I am excited about the result and worry if it comes up how I want but to tell the truth, I really noticed that since I started again my art, my skills becoming better everyday. So it worth to keep doing it.

There are different artists in Steemit who I keep close contact with and who I know already since beginning such as: @nehab, who does oil, acrylic and watercolor, which associated with beautiful poems and stories, @thiea, who is except tradition art also does beautiful abstract and digital works, @xpilar, who is a digital artist, I love his stunning sky and sunset,@agneslaczo who is a great artist, I love her animation works :-)

When I do my works I want them to be perfect, therefore of course I buy quality materials and it is expensive, but what we do, every month I buy one or two items, like special watercolor paper, masking fluid, texturing paste, canvases, gesso/primer and of course different art mediums. But also since my relatives know about the Revival of my art works I get a top ups for holidays and birthday too. When one of my art medium is close to end then I just start using another.

Here are my art mediums that I love shown as end results, you can see the process photo in my blog too:

DIFFERENT ART MEDIUMS:

• SOFT PASTEL

I never used anything else except pencils but when my mother in-law heard that I re-starting my hobby she presented me a box of SOFT PASTEL and pastel block.

Starting with simple drawings I was amazed how beautiful colors you can make with pastels. Living at sea side in the little coastal area of Scotland with so many nice people and fisher boats it was no wonder what I would choose as topic for my drawing.

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SOS... Save Our Souls - by @Stef1

Battle of Trafalgar by @Stef1

Here I want to share with you my pastel works of "Save our Souls“ and "Battle of Trafalgar" to show you that even such details drawing you can do with thick pastel sticks, if you have a passion for drawing.

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• GRAPHITE Pencils:

This is the basic and may be the cheapest tool for the artist but nevertheless to get good quality graphite is essential, this is how it looks to do drawing with graphite. It takes much longer time, because you can‘t cover big surface quickly but I enjoyed it very much.

Land Ahoy ! - by @Stef1

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• ACRYLIC Painting.

That became one of my favorite because I could use my favorite palette knife to create texture, have never done before but fell in love by first attempt:

Sunset at the Harbour II - by @Stef1

Sunset at the Harbour - by @Stef1

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• WATERCOLOR

That medium is underestimated by many people, it is one of the most difficult one that needs a lot of patience and skills to draw, only then it will work. It took me about 6 months on and off LOVE-and-HATE relationship to Watercolor but at the end being consequent and trying again and again brought their fruits.

Santa Maria della Salute - by @Stef1

Waiting for the start - by @Stef1

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At the end I just would like to tell that Steemit brought my my old passion to ART back and gave me the opportunity to share my works with other people. Thank Steemit I learnt other ART Mediums and learnt many interesting artists and of course improved my own skills.

I love the last question of @anomadsoul how to explain an alien my hobby, I think I would just take my pencil and draw the alien portrait :)

I hope you enjoyed my post and thank you for viewing, your @Stef1