Ended Official BYC Mini Contest - "WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY?"

[Sally Sunshine]

So my hobby is obvious given my screen name. I have loved fishing since I was a kid, from stream fishing for trout to pond fishing for blue gills and chasing bigger fish as I got older. Husband and I have gotten boats of many types and sizes over the past 16 years and our latest is finally big enough to share trips with multiple other people at a time. We camp every weekend and a couple of vacation weeks near the shores of lake Erie where we chase walleye, we fish the lower Potomac river and Chesapeake bay a couple times a year when visiting family and friends and the Atlantic seaboard (near shore so far, no overnight offshore trips yet) once or twice a year when visiting boating friends further south.
Best thing about the hobby hasn't been the 'free' fish (scaredy how fast expenses can add up! LOL).... it has been the time spent with friends and family while chasing them! With our latest boat we have expanded our trips to include folks from a disabled veterans group we have been involved in. They usually stream fish but many expressed interest in boating so we have been taking them out for walleye 2 at a time. I think 22 lake erie trips in the last couple of years. Most rewarding trips wehave ever done, hands down!
A few pictures from our adventures...
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I think its a fabulous hobby, and one I dont get to do very much anymore. And taking Vets, you guys are amazing! love you guys! and the doggies too!

 

[Sally Sunshine]

Most of my hobbies are arts and crafts related. There are SO MANY THINGS that I love doing, but my first passion in life was drawing... think I started when I was old enough to hold a crayon. My parents used to enter me in coloring contests and I always took art classes in school. I really meant to go to college, but life happened, dance clubs, horses and other stuff... and after 20 years of being a florist and shop manager, I lost my job unexpectedly.

My husband and I had been trying to have a baby for years, but my workload and holiday stress level never seemed to allow it. Losing my job felt like the worst thing in the world just happened, but turned out to be the best. Unemployment paid for me to go back to school full time for graphic design. Shortly after I started school, (approaching 40 years old) I got pregnant! Then my hubby got his dream job. Anyway, after I had this lovely sweet baby girl growing up without me at the babysitter's, I never did finish my degree... just decided to be a stay at home mom.
Oh well.

Hobby #1 is Drawing

My favorite media to work with was pencil and watercolor, I think because they could be erased or easily manipulated as the work progressed. These are from junior high school.
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My first and only attempt at drawing anything mechanical. At the time, my husband owned a Triumph Daytona 675 (his pride and joy) so I drew this for an anniversary gift -with a mechanical pencil.
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Then I discovered charcoal, another easy-to-work-with medium, but very messy. This is a large drawing and I also used a white chalk pencil.
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Here's that sweet little girl I was talking about. She was the focus of many of my school projects.
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mixed media: charcoal, graphite, pen and ink.
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not a drawing, but I had to draw the outline before I could cut it out of paper.
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The following are a few sketches from last year. I tried doing a couple drawing challenges which required a new drawing for every day of the month.

October's challenge was called "Inktober" and was supposed to be ink only, which I never had the confidence to really try before, but I pushed through. Each drawing was based on a specific prompt word for the day. I used Sharpie, sometimes ink washes with a brush, various ink pens and also some tinted markers.
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"Huevember" could be any medium, just a dominant color based on a different shade every day from a color wheel containing 30 colors for the month of November. By this point I became pretty fond of ink, and most of these drawings were ink and colored pencil.
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I know this post is getting really long but I just have to share this... because I also love coloring in coloring books and it's something my daughter and I can do together. My favorite books are by Johanna Basford.
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This lovely author periodically has world-wide coloring contests, so we entered one on a whim. This competition was for the release of her new book "Ivy and the Inky Butterfly." She's based in the UK and has a beautiful website.
These are my entries
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And my 6 year old daughter Emily's entries
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So as it turned out, Emily was one of 5 winners!
She won an enormous gift pack of art supplies and a personal note from Johanna Basford herself. Talk about a proud moment!
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OH WOW!!!

 

[Sally Sunshine]

@Sally Sunshine I know this is a contest, but I'm loving how it's giving us all a chance to know each other better. Somehow, this seems like more than just another contest.

Thanks for spearheading this!

 

[Sally Sunshine]

I make things from firewood; mostly lamps but some other stuff as well.
Below are a few pictures from a local art exhibition I was invited to attend in the local village on 03/11/2018 (last weekend) I sell a few at various festivals around Catalonia and more recently I’ve been getting a more commissions.
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This thread is about the stuff I make.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/shadrachs-lamps.1272460/

Very unique and beautiful, what Art!

Wow so much talent already posted, I am almost speechless! and that is rare

 

[Dawnclucks22]

I like drawing. I’m definitely an amateur, because I can only draw with reference, but my goal is that one day I’ll be able to think of something in my head and put it on the page. I also love to write, although I don’t have pictures of those!

 

[feathermaid]

Thank you everyone for the lovely comments

You are an incredible artist! And your daughter, WOW! I know of no 6 year old with the ability to do that!

Flappy, I'm speechless! Your work is
And your 6-year old, wow!

Yeah that butterfly thing was her first real lesson in patience, because it didn't come easily at first.


I printed about 20 copies of the picture to experiment with color palettes and such... Emily would take her time diligently coloring inside the lines with carefully chosen colors on one wing, then she'd scribble the rest with one color and get upset that it didn't look right. So I used that as an opportunity to explain that great things don't happen in an instant. It's OK to just stop when you're tired, and go back to it later. Once that concept sank in, we spent days on end coloring together!

All of her drawings have a story. She was most proud of the first one pictured here... she said it has electric antennae that sparkle at night time.
In the second, she didn't want the butterfly to be lonely so she made friends (ladybug, praying mantis and bee) so they could play together near the mountain on a sunny day.

Then when the announcement was made that the "friends" picture won, she was excited but then said "Why didn't she choose my sparkle one? It's so much prettier."

Another learning lesson... this time about how beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

 

[feathermaid]

@Sally Sunshine I know this is a contest, but I'm loving how it's giving us all a chance to know each other better. Somehow, this seems like more than just another contest.

Thanks for spearheading this!

Yes!!! There is so much talent involved in everyone's hobbies here. Even the ones I'm not familiar with at all can offer an interesting and fresh perspective!

I want to comment on every single person's post... but I don't want to keep clogging up the thread (but I probably will anyway). I just love love looking "behind the scenes" of familiar names.

 

[feathermaid]

Our favorite has turned out to be crappie fishing! And crappie eating! Yum!

At first I was thinking-- if it's so crappy why do you like it? Then I remembered it's a kind of fish ( can you tell I'm not a fisherman)

Wow!! You're incredible. Those are beautiful drawings.

Haha, thanks. I've spent more time on my belly in chicken poop than I care to remember. They're so determined to only give you butt shots. Not helpful, guys.

OH WOW!!!

Thanks, I really appreciate your kind words.

@BantyChooks I think I recall seeing a lot more artwork from you in some other threads... maybe they were old (so hard to keep track). But you're an amazing artist as well!! I've admired much of your work. And now I know that laying down in chicken poop is the best way to get awesome photos!

 

[silkiemother]

1 One of my hobbies that I love besides the joy of my life,chickens and horses+all farm activities,is making stuff. Wheither it is art,knitting,sewing,gardening,fishing,baking....the list goes on and on.But one the ones that I enjoy the most is making stuff for my poultry and taking them to fair with the rest of my FFa friends and getting to know geese,ducks,pigeons,and quail that other people took to the fair.This is baby in her Hawwiian costume that I made for her for Halloween and she has quite a few others:farmer,poptart(not done with that one yet)a young geese herder,a princess, a baby,hence her name,and a warrior.

And somehow I manage to do all this stuff while I am balancing 9th grade,FFA,chores,homework.this is the way I show up to school every morning: poultry print covered boots,messy hair,probly chicken poop on me somewhere,scratches from checking over the birds,and shavings on me from the coop + chicken feed in my pockets,but truth be told,I really do not care what my fellow students might say,I exist outside the pecking order of school.Also I have fun taking my birds to places and curling up with them in my bedroom and drawing life-like pictures of them.it is so hard in the spring with all the new chicks that come into farm stores,you might say that one of my hobbies is chicken collecting.

 

[Blooie]

I was so impressed with little Emily’s art that I hope you’ll all indulge me for sharing one of Katie’s masterpieces. Katie is my granddaughter and she was born with asymmetrical hips, missing a rib, and has Autism. We live close to Yellowstone Park and have taken her a few times a year since she was about 2.

One year on a snowy December day her mom was busy and then-4-year old Katie was underfoot. Finally Jenny gave her some paper and her little tin container of Prang watercolors. Katie dove right in and painted her favorite place in the world - Artist Point in Yellowstone. When we take her to the park, even now at 12, we have to drag her away from that spot. So anyway, after she finished her painting she wanted to bring it to me for my fridge. I knew instantly exactly what it was, and fridge my hiney....that painting is framed and hanging in my living room! She had no postcard or photo for reference. At 4 years old she painted this from memory. For those of you who have never seen Artist Point, I’ll also post a photo of it too so you can see why I cherish hers so much.

Artist Point

Katie’s Painting if Artist Point. 4 years old, Autistic, done from memory.