Swim

Here is what I have submitted for IF's theme for w/c Friday 22nd March - 'Swim'.  Today is the day I get a scanner so this should be the last of my dodgy blurry camera uploads! I've been thinking about doing a 'swimming' sketch for ages now as swimming has been really important to me since the start of 2013. It has helped me so much with feeling healthy in my pregnancy, it is also the time when I dream up ideas for what to draw, and it has boosted my confidence so much that something I thought I was really no good at I actually can do. There are also some really nice people who also go to the pool regularly who I am always happy to bump into.

This was just a preliminary sketch to try and get the composition but then I quite liked her and of course couldn't help colouring her in.  Also, she was obviously going to be a self-portrait of me but her face is definitely not mine.  I had given her a quick little sketched in face in pencil which I had planned to change later. I was tired out from swimming and cleaning the flat and didn't have the energy or concentration levels to focus on my face in a mirror. But the face I drew seemed sweet and reminded me of a friend and I didn't have the heart to erase her. 

I have been going swimming 2/3 times a week since the start of the year and I think that the free swimming for pregnant women courtesy of the NHS is just brilliant and I really hope the Government don't ever scrap it given the fact that they are chipping away at the NHS!  I spent my whole life thinking I was a terrible swimmer because school swimming lessons made me feel like I was useless. I was convinced I couldn't swim more than a length of a pool.  But I started swimming due to the free swimming and because I have some trouble with my hip which only swimming seems to help.  I found within a week that I could in fact swim 20 lengths! Then I met a man at the pool. He is retired and his name is Peter and he said that since he retired he has started going swimming and to the gym and lost 8 stone (112lbs).  He encouraged me to try swimming half a mile.  So I tried, and I did. And now I swim half a mile every time I go to the pool and sometimes I do 3/4 of a mile. I know I'm not the fastest or furthest swimmer, but I think it's not bad for a pregnant woman, who was kept in the bottom group at school!!

I would like to get rid of the hatched lines and redo her so that all of her is shaded with overlaying Promarkers. You can just about see the effect of that in the top half of her body.