I have lots of this plant growing in shady areas of my yard. Last month it bloomed beautifully.
One sunny morning, I noticed that it had cast its shadow onto the weathered fence.
I have been wanting to sketch this view ever since. Well, truthfully I want to paint it. But I like to do a preliminary sketch before I paint. It helps me understand the details.
And boy, there are a lot of them.
I’m thinking that the scene needs some simplification to clarify its primary point. So I will work on that in another sketch. THEN I’ll pull out the paint.
We’re seeing lots of this little birds lately. The fuchsias, no, I don’t have any. But I find them charming flowers, and so I included them in this sketch.
This one’s for you, chrisknits, Alissa Head, mildygranola, Liz, Bonny, Marilee and all my knitting friends who have cast on so many projects this month.
Since I missed celebrating the equinox on the right date, I am belatedly posting pictures of spring flowers blooming in my yard. This one is the front yarn, showing multiple pansies, some grape hyacinths, and the foliage of daffodils whose blooms got zapped in the late February freeze.
Another view including late blooming daffs that just opened up this week.
Two views of the back yard.
On to more artsy subjects. I may have mentioned that I am taking a course in traditional art. It runs for ten weeks, five of which are devoted to drawing. Since I am nearly finished with the drawing portion of the course, I thought I would share some pages from my sketchbook.
Full disclosure: I am not really working very hard at this, due to other, more deadline-driven projects that have eaten away at my free time. Here are some pages with notes and examples of drawing adult and child portraits.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF UNIVERSAL PROPORTIONS APPLIED TO ADULT AND CHILD FACES.
The first lesson was about still life drawing.
Next came portraits of children. I chose to draw three girls from a photograph I found on Unsplash.com. I was charmed by their expressions.
Last Monday, we moved on to animals. This drawing is based on a magazine photograph – probably National Geographic.
SNOW LEAPORD
It’s been pretty fun so far. There is a lot light-hearted banter, and no-one is stressing about their performance very much. From feedback I have received, I am encouraged to try more portraits. I’m also ready to have a go at drawing those frisky squirrels which make their home in our trees and regularly steal food from the bird feeders.
My creative bent took an unexpected turn today. I started the day by thinking about Van Gogh. You see in the photo the sunflowers I planted this year. I took this image over my garden fence with the idea that it would make a good reference photo for artwork. To further this end, I made a sketch of the photo this morning.
This is a simplified image that I thought would work well for either water color or fiber. Since I am currently up to my eyeballs in reference photos suitable for water color painting, I decided to make a small art quilt featuring sunflowers.
This is what led my brain to Van Gogh. Sunflowers were a favorite subject of the artist. He liked to paint them as still life images, cut and arranged in a vase.
I intended to portray them growing in the garden. But I wanted to create a “Van Gogh” like background – full of color, motion and energy. Think of Starry Night as an example.
During my blog browsing today, I came across a post from the group 15 by 15. This is a very creative group of quilters who like to work challenges. One of the members mentioned that she used the “confetti technique” to create the background of her new work for the current challenge.
My brain started firing up! What is this “confetti technique?” I must learn more!
Of course You-tube came to the rescue. I found an explanation on how to add confetti to a quilt. There are several techniques, but I watched this one by Gail Hunt.
The rest of the afternoon went like this:
Find a bunch of scraps. (I used several from my Under the Sea quilt, because they already had adhesive attached to them.) With your rotary cutter, slice them to bits.
Arrange on a background fabric and press them down with your iron.
Cover the piece with a bit of tulle or netting. Glue or stitch it in place.
With sewing machine and free motion foot, stitch over the piece like crazy. (I used black thread to meander on the background and sew straight lines over the pale bits.)
Front and Back
I then switched to white thread and made swirls into the dark areas.
Daily Fiber 