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Welcome back. I hope you are (reasonably) well and that spring and the return of the sun is making your lives a little bit brighter. Regardless, thank you for tuning in on another blog post about the We Have Great Stuff – Volume 3 colouring book.

Teaching for this semester is over, and I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. Even though each day may feel long, before you know it, it is Friday and another week has gone by, and then suddenly the whole semester is over. Or at least that is how I have felt these past months. As usual for me, my motivation was lacking a bit there at the end of the teaching, so I printed a couple of my illustration and coloured them while watching lectures online. It really saved me, let me tell you. I almost felt like watching more, just so I could keep colouring. I have included the coloured drawings later in this post.

Another thing I’ve done is make my own little colouring book from some of my drawings. It was my grandmother’s birthday in March, and it’s always difficult to come up with a good gift since she doesn’t really need anything. So, I made this book for her as homemade gifts are always appreciated by grandparents. I printed the sketches and made sure there was a blank page in between so that colour from pens wouldn’t ruin the drawing on the backside. I then embroidered a little insect on a piece of carton that I used as the cover of the book. The insect is from a sketch I made based on an engraving on a violin, which is included below. Because I don’t have a stapler that can reach the middle of the paper, I sew the book together by hand. In case you were wondering, my grandmother did love it. Off course, I have also added pictures of the book to this blog post, I wouldn’t keep that from you.

I got a bit of a shock one day when I opened Sketchpad to draw because they had changed their layout a bit. Luckily, the features and tools are they same, they just changed place. This is why the layout is now different from the videos I shared in my last post. I figured it out and have added some new sketches that I hope you like. I hope colouring them will provide a mindful mental time-out from the pandemic and zoom-fatigue, as well as the stressful period of examination we are now entering.

As always, if you do colour some of them, please do not hesitate to share the outcome on social media using the hashtags #WeHaveGreatStuff and #WeAreEdinburgh.

I hope you enjoy my drawings,

Marta

My Homemade Book

Three of the sketches are included below and the others can be found in previous posts.

My Coloured Drawings

New sketches

1. The Insect and Fantasy Dragon

Made from two different artifacts held in the Centre for Research Collections. The first is the cute bug that I used for the cover of my book, which is a detail on a violin. And the second is an illustration from the margins of a manuscript of the Celtic Psalter from the 11th century.

  • Title: Violin without sides
    • Creator: Possibly the Bassano family of Venice and London
    • Item/Collection reference: 329, 0032304c-0005
    • Collection name: MIMEd (Musical Instrument Museums Edinburgh)
  • Title: Celtic Psalter, 11th C.
  • Quote by Oscar Wilde

2. Horse insides

Yes, it looks like a flower, but it’s actually a detailed illustration of parts of the insides of a horse. My mum believes it’s the uterus, but I’m not well-versed in horse anatomy and cannot be sure.

(Copyright © The University of Edinburgh 2021 CC BY )

(Copyright © The University of Edinburgh 2021 CC BY )

(Copyright © The University of Edinburgh 2021 CC BY )

(Copyright © The University of Edinburgh 2021 CC BY )

I Made a Book! and New Drawings / Colouring books blog by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0

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