Although I have generally been avoiding TV, I have been enjoying watching the four part Moving Art nature documentary series on Netflix. I love that there is no narration, only peaceful background music. Flowers is my favorite (not surprisingly).
Category: Mixed Media Work
Paper Butterflies
A Recent Experiment:
I painted little butterflies on scraps of watercolor paper that were too small to use for anything else. Then I cut them out with an exacto knife. I am planning on using these little cutouts for some sort of collage project that I haven’t yet figured out. When I was drawing these, I looked up some images of butterflies online but I took a lot of liberties with the colors and patterns so they are not at all accurate.
Mail Art
This is an article about the show from The Recorder.
Playing with White Gel Pen
I got a white (and silver) Sakura Gelly Roll pen recently and tried it out in my sketchbook. For the fantasy landscape, I used it for the stars and on the teapot, I used it for the floral design. I haven’t used a white pen since I was a child but I remember the same frustrating feeling of inconsistent ink flow, ink that wasn’t truly opaque and visible scratches in the ink from the metal nib. Even still, it is satisfying to see the white lines on a dark background. In some of the facebook sketching groups I am a part of, the Uni-ball Signo Broad UM-153 Gel Pen is recommended because the ink flow is very smooth and opaque. I think I will definitely try the Uni-ball pen out in the future. If you have another recommendation for a white gel pen, please let me know in the comments.
Sunset After a Light Snow
This is in the mail on the way to New York City for the Twitter Art Exhibit to be held in March. Proceeds benefit Foster Pride’s HandMade program, which teaches girls in foster care how to crochet and then market their product line.
I based this painting from a snapshot I took after one of our recent minor snowstorms. The sunset was brilliant, with pinks and purples and the lake was mostly unfrozen. This piece is more whimsical than my normal work, and I had fun with it. I used graphite pencil, Neocolor I oil pastels and watercolor.
Pink Peony with Buds
A pink peony for Valentine’s Day, drawn from my photo archives. I have really been enjoying the artwork of Inky Leaves on Instagram and I’m getting inspired to start making some more botanical themed artwork myself in the near future. I never used to care for the white backgrounds in traditional botanical painting (thinking they were too boring), but this aesthetic has grown on me and I’m going to try to leave my backgrounds white for the next couple of paintings.
Winter Atmosphere
This year, it does not feel like a normal winter. It is mid January and we are just starting to get some of the expected winter weather, but we haven’t yet had a proper blizzard. I miss it in a way. Even without the massive piles of snow on the ground, I still find winter beautiful. There is a crispness in the air and a whiteness of the light that I really enjoy. Here is a recent drawing from my sketchbook–thanks for taking a look.
We had a bountiful pear harvest this year.
This season is the first one that yielded a significant number of pears from the pear trees (Bartletts, two of them). The first year, there was nothing and the trees had to be dug up and rotated as they were planted improperly. The second year, we got pears on one of the trees but someone stole them! This year, the trees were heavy-laden with pears. One of the trees had fewer, fatter pears. The other tree had more pears, but they were generally smaller. We canned most of them already, but we saved some of the baby pears for eating.
Spinach Illustrations
The above images are three illustrations of spinach I made for Sow True Seed, an open-pollinated and heirloom garden seed company. I illustrated three varieties of spinach: America, Winter Giant, and Bloomsdale Longstanding (shown in that order), and these images will be printed on the seed packets. I had my choice of vegetables and I picked spinach because it is a personal favorite of mine and it reminds me of my Greek heritage.
The company sent me reference images to work from, and I also did a lot of image searches online while researching. In the end, I used my own props and made up the spinach from my own imagination. It was a huge challenge for me to work from imagination and I’m glad I took a shot at it. The ink work is a little different than what I do normally – I was going for a more heavy handed look, like a woodcut.
I am thinking of framing these together and hanging them in my kitchen. The packets won’t be sold until the start of next year, and I will post a picture when that time comes around.
Spring!
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Today felt like a late January winter’s day with snow and wind, but over the past few weeks the snow mounds have gone down some and I can see grass on my lawn again. I am trusting that true spring weather is coming soon.
For the past few weeks I’ve been busy working on projects for other people, which I will post when they are finished. I’m looking forward to when they are complete and I will be able to make some things just for me again.