My #Inktober sketch diary for October 2015

Have you heard of #Inktober ? It's a challenge to do ink sketches throughout October and happily fits perfectly with my October sketch diary entries :)


Such a lot happened in week 40. Rory-dog had his first birthday which we celebrated by making sugar-free carrot cake muffins for him :) We had 2 noone-will-want-to-nick-these bikes-for-uni to fix up; I had my first German class; and we had the big uni drop-offs too. Exhausting!

week 40

My first empty-nester week was made more bearable by having Rory-dog to sleepover at the weekend. He's a darling.

week 41

Week 42 was a quiet one. I'm learning to knit and you never know, with a following wind I might just have a cushion cover done by this time next year...

week 42

 My children live in the laptop now.

week 43

Week 44 was such a fun time! Rory-dog came to stay for a whole 5 days - we were BOTH exhausted by the end of Sunday.

week 44

You can catch up on previous entries here:

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015
• April 2015
• May 2015
• June 2015
• July 2015
• August 2015
• October 2015

Sketch Diary September 2015

Welcome to my inky world!

The first week in September was taken up with rescuing the disastrous blackberry jelly-jam with bottles of liquid pectin. Thankfully I had three days with the part-time pup to help me recover :)

week 36

Ah the weather was kind during week 37. We borrowed my dad's touring caravan and took it off to the Peak District for a few days.

week 37

Highlights of week 38 included a couple of days with Rory (the borrowed dog) and singing in the church choir at a wedding on the Saturday.

week 38

On the 21st September my new super duper 15mm thick yoga mat arrived - I am the envy of the class :D

week 39

The last week of the month was a busy one. Rory was 1 year old so we made him a set of special birthday muffin cakes - basically carrot cake without any sugar. Yum said Rory and wolfed the lot down, paper and all. Lots of bike repairs happened during the week in anticipation of the university drop offs, which were on Thursday for my son, and Saturday for my daughter. They've both settled in really well.

You can catch up on previous entries here:

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015
• April 2015
• May 2015
• June 2015
• July 2015
• August 2015

Sketch Diary August 2015

Here's my sketch diary for August, another fun filled month in the Guy household!


Highlights of week 32 included a trip down the mines at Castleton and a walk along Froggat Edge in the Peak District at the beginning of the week, and a night at Derwentwater Youth Hostel in the Lake district at the end of the week.

week 32

Week 33 was very tense, Thursday was A level results day - thankfully the results were AMAZING and daughter Kit is now packing for university :) At the end of the week Rory (our part-time pup) came for his first overnight stay.

week 33

Week 34 was fun, we went to a friend's 50th birthday party on the Saturday

week 34

Week 35 contained the disastrous jam making experience. I was making blackberry and apple jelly but I think I measured the sugar wrong and had to take an emergency trip to Sainsburies for liquid pectin to sort out the vast quantities of blackberry and apple juice that I had made :')

week 35

You can catch up on previous entries here:

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015
• April 2015
• May 2015
• June 2015
• July 2015

I do hope you're enjoying your peek into my world.

Sketch Diary July 2015

July was a super fun month; wedding dress shopping with my niece (carefully leaving the actual dress chosen out of the sketch or life would have been not worth living), my daughter passed her driving test and we had a lovely fortnight in Cornwall followed by a few days in the Peak District. A thoroughly spoilt time!

week 27

week 28

week 29

week 30

week 31

You can catch up on previous entries here:

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015
• April 2015
• May 2015
• June 2015

Sketch diary June 2015

Here are my sketch diary entries for June 2015 and I'm half way through the year already!

week 23

week 24

week 25

week 26

You can catch up on previous entries here:

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015
• April 2015
• May 2015

I do hope you're enjoying your peek into my world.

Sketch Diary May 2015

Uh oh, it's nearly the end of July and I haven't done a sketch diary post for a while. Oops - I hope you don't mind a sudden barrage of posts until I've caught up!

Here are my entries for May 2015

week 19

week 20
there's a space on Sunday for me to sketch the sewing machine that I inherited (it's currently in for repair)

week 21

week 22

You can catch up on previous entries here:

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015
• April 2015

Sketch Diary January 2015

Following on from my previous blog post about my new sketch diary here are my entries up to the 1st of February 2015.

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Week Five

I'm really enjoying this challenge. My aim is to complete each day's sketch on the right day within a maximum of 15 minutes, and although I have to confess that on a couple of occasions I've done the sketch the next day, it's going really well so far.

It can be tricky to find something relevant every day - the process of choosing something and then drawing it is making me really appreciate the every day mundane things in life. There isn't something exciting happening every day but there is always something sketchable to be found - shopping for a new radio; cooking dinner; spending 2 hours getting a bike on the roof of my car in the cold (and hail); my daffodils going from fully closed to fully in bloom in just 2 days and so on - all worthy subjects!

It's not too late to join me - grab a bargain diary and get sketching!

Keeping a sketch diary

A Happy New Year to all my readers, I hope you all enjoyed the festivities! I had a lovely time with my family and friends, it was kind of sad to take down the decorations today.

What was your best Christmas present? I have two favourites - one was a blackboard mug which is surprisingly good fun, but the one I want to show you today is this:

and inside it looks like this...

I'm super excited about this - there's just enough space for me to record my year in sketches! This is an idea that we saw in the museum of life in Leamington Spa, where a lady from bygone times kept a sketch diary of all her social outings. It was really very interesting and much easier to browse than a written diary.

My diary's very first outing was to Costa Coffee in Ormskirk, one of my daughter's favourite destinations for completing homework and revising for exams.

By the end of the first week it looks like this:

Tuesday: my budgies Chiquitita and Lollipop

Wednesday (New Year's Eve): Jules Holland's Hootenanny - I love that program!

Thursday (New Year's Day): a cup of tea in my Edwardian teacup; our handmade chinese lantern fairy lights that we bought in Germany just before Christmas; and a fox screen cleaner that our Xmas house guest forgot to take back to the USA with her :( 

Friday: a gorgeous fox red labrador that daughter was puppy sitting

Saturday: a small part of our family New Year's meal and my birthday scooter (enjoyed by most of the oldies and only a couple of the younger more self concious adults of the family) 

Sunday: surprise surprise, we're back in Costa - the Maghull one this time for a change :D

I do hope you like seeing my sketches. I'll show you some more over the course of the year here on my blog and will be showing more regular updates over on my Stephanie Guy Fine Art facebook page

Did you get any good arty Christmas gifts this year? Share your favourite ones with me in the comments!