When Life Gives You Lemons... Draw Them.

Still Life Drawing with Bitter Lemon Creative’s David Drakeley

Lockdown has been an incredible opportunity to channel creativity, allowing us the time and space to think about having hobbies. Getting creative in any form is a cathartic process that allows us to step away from the day’s feelings, our phones, the news and to focus our energy on what’s in front of us. Creative expression has long-since been advocated for promoting mental well-being, fostering healing and as an explorative form of therapy. 

Still Life in particular is something that people have been drawn to over the last year, as a way of documenting their daily lives and being creative in the process. Someone particularly fond of Still Life is David Drakeley, Blushes Graphic Designer and Founder of Bitter Lemon Creative.

Bitter Lemon are a Cheltenham-based Digital Design Agency, specializing in Marketing Strategy, Brand Creation & Graphic Design. Their work includes an eclectic mix of hand-drawn illustrations with eye-catching, unconventional graphic text in a way that’s contemporary and fresh, we love their style.

David Drakeley works with us on all things creative and digital, alongside our wonderful marketing team. David’s currently working behind the scenes with us on some very exciting projects that we’ll be sharing with you in the next few weeks!

“When I’m not working on a commission or illustrating for my day job, I draw with my daughters (aged 5 and 2) all the time. They’ll probably be colouring mermaids and I’ll grab whatever is close to hand and scribble it out really quickly. It’s a great way to relax.

Still life has apparently been making a comeback over the last year as a way of people documenting their lives in lockdown. I’d encourage everyone to give it a go.”

Notes from David…

“For people that say they can’t draw, I think the most important thing is to give an impression of what you see rather than aim for a photorealistic reproduction. Look at what’s in front of you and try to get the shapes as right as you can then focus on shadows and light. If you scrunch your eyes tight, you’ll lose the detail and see the light.

Everyday objects like fruit and veg are a great place to start drawing because you don’t need exact sizing to produce a picture that looks good (whereas something like portrait work is less forgiving). 

I’ll do a really quick sketch (usually of the mug of coffee I’m drinking) and hashtag it #30secondmasterpiece. It doesn’t really matter what it is or how long it takes, as long as you keep practising.”

We want our Blushes community to join in the challenge, in the spirit of David’s “#30secondmasterpiece” we want you to come up with a hand-drawn sketch of something in your everyday life and tag us @blusheshair with “#blushesdoodles”. (The time frame is completely at your discretion, especially if you’re doing it with little ones!)

We can’t wait to see what you come up with!