A slow end of October; in terms of sharing more work here that I had originally planned. Trying to get more paintings done for portfolio updates, as well as certain personal deadlines I want to meet. Hopefully I’ll get more new work up here soon. 🙂 Until then, a little toned paper sketch from ITV’s Sanditon. Little bummed we didn’t get a proper Austen ending from Andrew Davies. 😆 Still, a huge fan of Davies and love every adaptation he’s done.
Also, you can follow me on Instagram & Twitter if you’d like a glimpse into what I’m working on, I try to get more updates for you guys on my socials anyways. 🙂
In between the painting I’ve been working on, I decided to take a little break – which basically meant binge-watching all 3 seasons of Stranger Things last weekend. I had some catching up to do. Naturally that resulted in some sketches; well one character in particular. I’m really looking forward to seeing the talented Dacre Montgomery in more roles in the future. As for Billy Hargrove, I knew I’d love the development of his character from the very beginning. And I’ll leave it at that for those who are still catching up. 😣
The wait after the first season is finally over, with Season 2 of Anne being released this month. My hopes of hearing more of Jerry’s (Aymeric Jett Montaz’) cheerful singing this season came true as well. 🎶
At this point I’ll put a SPOILER warning for those who haven’t finished the second season yet. 🙂
I briefly touched on this on my Twitter, but I thought that Moira Walley-Beckett, the writers and rest of the creative team for the show have continued the wonderful job they did last season. Everything from the scenery, to the details in the costumes and props were lovely once again. I realize that there are people who still don’t really care for this version of Anne of Green Gables, as they find it to be much darker than previous adaptations. Maybe because its my love of Victorian novels (as well as the Edwardian era) and my interest in the historical aspects of how society and its people functioned then, the culture, etc. that I don’t find the show to be “dark”. To be honest that would be my only criticism of season 2, as I personally found it lacking in that ‘atmosphere’ it had both with the shots and musical score from the first. Nevertheless, I still found myself looking at each scenery, the shops in every location, what people were doing in the background in every episode. It would be a shame not to, given the lengths the creators of the show have gone to in terms of trying to keep to historical accuracy. I enjoy having the books I read as a child as a starting point, to which the show now provides more detail and expands the world as it would have been given the era, the country, town and/or community. It’s still an adaptation of the books, but one that I can thoroughly enjoy as an adult. 🙂
The one thing that most reviews covered this time around was the relevance to modern time, notably with the characters of Cole and Sebastian ‘Bash’. I was also pleasantly surprised at the depth of character development we got given the number of episodes. My emotional stability was definitely challenged (trying to keep the waterworks to a minimum) with the glimpse into the lives of the adults like Mrs.Barry and continuing on to other characters who might have been previously overlooked like, Prissy & Billy Andrews and even Josie Pye.
Sketchbook Anne S2 – Billy Andrews (Christian Martyn)
Yesterday was Family Fan Day in Toronto, and I was lucky enough to meet some of the stars from various shows like Murdoch Mysteries, Caught, and Anne. The cast were so incredibly nice, to the extent of indulging me in signing my work. I’m curious to know how many of you were also able to drop by at the Sony Centre yesterday?
07.03.2018_WIP
If you’re on Twitter you can view more of the event using the #FamilyFanDay as well more of my unintentional awkwardness here @Shaima. 🙂
When the photographer doesn’t know if your camera is working or not…Time for some new tech upgrades I think, lol.
We’re already 2 months in, but I hope everyone is having a wonderful New Year so far. With a slow ending to 2017 for myself, December and much of January has been a major pain to get through. However, like many artists will tell you, you just have to find a way through. So here’s to a more eventful new year, and hopefully more completed artworks to share with you all. 🙂
If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you may have seen me ready to give up on this one more than once. I’ve had very few pieces that I would consider ‘failures’, to the extent that I consider scrapping them altogether; this one definitely came close. It’s natural to encounter problems with certain projects (personal or otherwise), but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating. In the end, I decided to use this drawing more as a field for experimenting with things I’ve wanted to try, rather than let the piece go to total waste.
The Call, colour-pencils & markers on paper, 11×14″, 2018
Moving on to painting, I decided to extend the ‘experimenting’ with a quick little piece to start off the year. Not as dark as I usually like to go, but since it was more of a sketch I didn’t mind all that much.
It’s been a rather slow November, but a much more exciting weekend with Marvel releasing The Punisher series last Friday. That basically summed up my weekend as I couldn’t stop watching. So glad to see Jon Bernthal get his own show; as I was looking forward to seeing a proper Punisher series for a very long time. An additional bonus was seeing Ben Barnes enter the franchise; as I know I couldn’t contain my excitement.
Continuing with sketches, as I was flipping through mine I landed on an unfinished piece. I don’t have many of these, but I can’t seem to find the inspiration at the moment to complete this one. Maybe I’ll come back to it in the future, who knows.
Scene from Shokichi’s MV Shelly
On a side note, there are some shop updates coming for my Etsy store so stay tuned for that here and on my Twitter @shaima_art
Art of Shaima 