Say cheese!

Paul, drawn from a photo taken in Dubai, '97. I noticed he's wearing the same clothes as in the first colour sketch and again this shade of blue posed problems with my limited colours. I used a blue/grey Cretacolour pencil but it was too dull so I hunted around and found some Prismacolours and Supracolours that I bought a few years ago. I tried layering another blue on top and made it worse but a little black and some darker black lines to accentuate the creases brought it back. I put a little green in the background to pick up on the shorts but it doesn't seem to show well from the scan. I'm not entirely happy with the result (a little overworked in parts) but I'm very happy with the progress and I learned a lot from doing this.

It feels quite bizarre to see these colour drawings - the style is mine, the method is almost the same and yet they look so different in colour. It's like looking at a twin you never knew you had! The last couple of weeks have been quite a revelation but as if the art progress wasn't enough I found out, I think, the answer to my food intolerances. I've been drawing from photos taken in Australia, which is strange because, no offence to anyone reading, I don't actually like the place very much! Two trips and two nightmare experiences - the full cost of the trip refunded the second time. But Australia is where I finally made the connection that bread was causing my problems. We were staying in hotel that did wonderful salads, which I don't normally go for, and I practically lived on them. Back to the normal diet the difference was obvious, no bloating.

So fast forward to this week, drawing photos of Oz. I bought some gluten-free bread rolls a few days ago but this is unusual for me, I avoid gluten-free products as they are so calorific and I started putting on weight when I was eating them a few years ago. I thought they would save time though, this week, a quick roll and I could get back to drawing. Well, all the same old symptoms came back and to cut a long story short, there were so few ingredients it can only be the yeast. Well that is a surprise, after nearly eleven years, but apparently, and I had no idea, these two have symptoms that are easy to confuse in mild cases like mine. I was surprised too to see the long list of foods that contain yeast, like my favourite hard cheeses. It solves the mystery of the second trip too, to tie in the Australian connection, when we visited some relatives for a barbecue. They knew I was wheat intolerant and bought some special veggie sausages for me, (not that that was necessary so I felt I had to eat them)...Now I know that lovely flavour must have been Vegemite! I hope next week will hold just as much progress but I'm not sure I can take any more surprises at this rate!