Norman the knight was discovered skulking behind some dusty brassware in one of our local antique shops. He wasn’t expensive, probably because he’s not really very fierce. Hardly the sort of knight you’d expect to see going off to battle, is he? I reckon he just likes the uniform, know what I mean?

Norman recently sat for me; or maybe I should say he stood for me. He seemed reluctant to get off his pedestal. My first attempt, I think, made him look slightly too chunky.

My second attempt was much better.

Meet Ozzie.

He has “Hell’s Bears” written on the back of his leather jacket. He’s been in the wars,too, as the saying goes; one of his motorcycle handlebars is missing. He was like that when we got him. We didn’t mind, though. We just liked the look of his little pudgy face. (I hope he’s not listening, by the way. He’d be horrified if he heard that!)

Click on the mean sonofagun to see a bigger — and even scarier — version.

The budgie is another of our ornaments. I drew both this and Ozzie on January 27th, according to my notes.

I can’t draw.

Or, at least, that’s what I always thought.

Over the past few years, though, I’ve been having a go. Turns out, I was misled, not only by parents and teachers but also by myself. I have still a long way to go, perhaps, but these early experiments in sketching have opened up a whole new area of interest.

Here are some artificial plants from our windowsill. Real flowers are all very well, except for the real gnats that they always seem to attract. Fake gnats are much less of a nuisance.

I drew our ficus tree (yes, it’s another fake) last week, while we were getting ready to go out to the shops.

When I was but a wee child, everyone in our family used to refer to elephants as ‘nellies’. It was all something to do with the old rock song, Nellie the Elephant, apparently.

This, however, is no Nellie; this is an exquisite china elephant that we bought sometime early in 2008. According to my sketchbook, I drew this on August 26th. Always a good idea to jot down the date on the page margin, I believe. That way, you can see how your drawing skills have progressed (and, with luck and practice, improved) over time.

[As with all our pictures, click on them to see a larger version. ]

Drawn around the same date, this dumper truck was a fun thing we bought a few years ago. I like dumper trucks, their bright yellow colour and their chug-chug-chugging engines. We were in our local branch of Tradex and saw some dumpers in the toy section. I kept mithering on about them until Shana finally agreed to buy me one. You see? Pester-power still works, even when you reach your senior years!