Where I was last week, and a couple of Icelandic sheep

I didn't post last week because I was away taking a five day intensive introduction to woodcarving.  It was really challenging but good.  I had a chance to begin practicing some techniques that I hope to develop further on my own, once I have a set of tools.

Today I sketched did a couple of sketches of Icelandic sheep, just to get back to drawing after the time away.  They're rough, but it feels good:

Completed artemsia cut-paper project

It's so nice to be able to describe a project as "completed".  This artemesia project was an interesting experiment in making a two dimensional image a little more three dimensional.

Crow sketches

I thought it would be useful to practice making slightly quicker, smaller sketches so I did a few of crows in various positions.  Results below.

Starting another rabbit

I wanted to try drawing another rabbit, to see if I could get the proportions a little truer to life and capture more of the expression of the creature.  Here's the picture I started today:

Wild rabbit

I love rabbits.  We have so many wild ones on our property, especially near the (fenced!) vegetable garden.  This morning I felt like drawing one.

A weed, and a cherry tomato twelve ways

I had a lot of fun sketching this morning.

Better hellebore leaves

Ok, they're better because I didn't try to shade them but still.

Giant mushroom and a hellebore leaf

This morning I bought a giant orange mushroom at a local farmstand.  It was unexpectedly pricey so I assuaged some of my guilt by using it as a model to draw from:

I probably "should" have gone on to apply watercolor to the sketch this afternoon (it's on watercolor paper, I plan to eat the model for dinner tonight...) but I've been feeling a lot of resistance about watercolor-ing (fear of failure, I think) so instead, I sketched a hellebore leaf from the garden:

I didn't realize it at first, but the leaf was gradually moving/drooping as a drew it, so I had to keep going back, erasing and redrawing parts that I'd thought I'd nailed.  I should have taken a photo before I tried adding shading because I feel like I wrecked the drawing with the shading.  To be blunt, the shading sucks (too choppy/not gradual enough).  But it was fun to be able to lay the color on quickly instead of working laboriously on tiny lines, as I usually do.  I plan to buy some charcoal (I was using the side of a soft pencil) and practice adding value just in black and white to future drawings.  I'm including the photo of what I made here because if I practice and am able to improve it will be good to see how far I've come.  Looking at it feels yucky right now, though.

Bird and flower sketch

This is what I drew today.  It's based on an 18th century Japanese bird and flower painting.  It's hard to tell in the photo but the central dark area is composed of thousands of tiny circles.  Ouch!

As you can see, I was exploring the idea of positive and negative space.

Artemesia papercut

It looks like I forgot to post on Friday.  I spent that day drawing and cutting out the artemesia leaves and was pretty happy with the way things were turning out.  I made a few more leaves this morning, filling in some gaps in leaf orientation and the overall shape of the cluster.

I'm not sure what the next step should be so I didn't glue them down.  The obvious thought is to tint each leaf lightly with watercolor, to bring them towards the silver-grey of the living plant.  (They are made of watercolor paper after all.)  But what I find most interesting about the leaves are the interactions between positive and negative space and the way the thickness of the multiple layers of paper moves a two dimensional material towards a three dimensional form.  I'd like to explore those ideas further, especially the second one.  It makes me wonder whether there is a different, thicker, material I could use than paper that still has enough flexibility to it to be able to conform to the contours of the varying levels beneath it.  I also makes me wonder what functional thing I could create using this slightly sculptural collage technique.

The antique Chinese ceramic-inspired pattern, continued

I've been playing with the elements of the Chinese porcelain platter that I drew earlier this week, to see if I could find a way of using them as part of a textile pattern.  I don't have anything I like yet, but thought I'd share couple of sketches.  The first shows how the octagons might relate to each other, the second shows new and and much more complex detail in the interior of each octagon, incorporating the other three elements of the pattern that I included in my last post.

Elements for a pattern inspired by a Chinese export platter, c.1750.

Today I was sketching some of the elements from a gorgeous antique Chinese platter that I saw in an auction catalog.  I'd like to see if there's a way that I can turn them into a textile pattern.

Blueberry twig greeting card

I was charmed by the simple beauty of a blueberry twig that I found beneath the bushes while picking berries on Saturday.  I drew the twig this morning, then turned the drawing into a blank greeting card.  The card is heavyweight card stock (130lbs) and the envelope is watercolor paper - the only heavyweight paper I had on hand in a large enough size to accommodate the roughly 4x8" card. 

I don't know who I'll send the greeting card to yet, but deciding will be fun.