Rekindling my drawing passion

I often blame college with all of its homework for having stolen the precious free time I would have otherwise dedicated to indulging in one of my many hobbies- playing the guitar, drawing, singing, reading belletry... But I have to admit that a lack of resolve on my part is also a culprit in me neglecting the things I used to enjoy back in high school and earlier. Now that I've graduated and I'm working part-time, I find myself having a lot of "empty" pockets of time that could be filled with one of the many fun activities I've missed (of course, other than spending good quality time with my now husband).
Marcio has been a big motivation in making me come back to drawing and develop it more. And as I was recently reminded of the verse: "Do not neglect the gifts you have", I had no further excuse for keeping my drawing on the shelf.

There is much more to learn and train up, but I thought I would post the few pictures I've drawn recently. Since I love cultures, the drawings were inspired by photographs from different ethnic groups around the world.

African beauty with prints (country unknown).

Happy Barroloola baby girl (Australia).

Tiwi boy body-painted for an Easter festival (Australia).

Sister feeding her baby brother in Tibet.

To dread.

This is what my baby dreaded head looks like at the moment after over 40 hours of purposeful knotting. I signed a mental contract with myself to keep them for at least a year. I have a feeling it might be longer!

*Needing advice on how to start your dreads? My dread reference manual: dreadheadHQ.com

Temporary dreads- a prelude to the real deal?

Recently, I've been seriously pondering the idea of dreadlocks. Jokingly I've been saying for years that I'll have dreads one day. But it got more real when I browsed through pictures of gorgeous, healthy-looking dreads. Then I started reading up on dreadlock maintenance and found out it's not as scary as people think. But what encouraged me most what when my hubs told me matter-of-factly that I should try it out. Perhaps I needed that extra push, being a perfectionist who hates having untidy hair and would lash out at every thin strand in a braid that's not conforming to the general flow. Needless to say, the Parisian "I just woke up and look like a princess" hairdos never worked for me.

Like this one... I would kill someone for a comb.

So after much evaluation, prayer and pondering, I decided to try out temporary dreads just to see how I'd look in them, and if I could survive not being able to brush my hair anymore. I recruited my friend Becca to help me out, found this great video, and we got down on them fake dreads. After about 30 minutes, this is how it looked:

Yes, we had a professional wife supervisor

And after 2 hours, voilà ze result!

These stayed in for about two days before I washed and combed them off. We made bigger sections so they turned out larger. If I get the real thing, I would prefer thinner dreads.

So now the decision time- to dread or not to dread? That is the question.