New Sketchbook

I bought a new book today, as I am wont to do. This time I decided not to add it to the stacks, but to actually start using it immediately. It is called Peggy Dean's Guide to Nature Drawing and Water Color. And I commandeered a very lightly used sketchbook and dived right in. She has a kind of Zentangle approach to drawing.....outline it in pen and ink, according to formula, and then add details and color it in. I keep whingeing and whining about not being able to draw. But making tangles has taught me that if you just forge ahead past your first marks, that the end result is often not nearly the disaster you think it will be at the beginning. And judicious addition of color (I used Inktense watercolor pencils and regular colored pencils) can go even further in making it looked like you planned it that way.

I love ink outlines and colored interiors.  I don't feel obligated to be entirely realistic, which I think is helping because then if something is "off" I can tell myself that it's OK, as long as it makes a successful design, it doesn't have to be 100% anatomically correct. Which goes against a lot of art lessons, where you try to draw what you see, without any outlines, just reproduction of what is in front of you. I am too intimidated by that right now. So, better than not sketching at all, let's give the crutches a try! 

These flowers and plant bits are disembodied, no attempt to place them in a scene, or even show the stems in most cases. But I'm thinking of cut out paper collage, stamps, what have you. And perhaps simplifying some and turning them into tangles and repeat patterns.

I'm filling up the empty spaces with notes on materials, thoughts on the process, philosophies of life, etc.  

I love blending colors with Inktense pencils. 

Sorry, a very dark version of a maidenhair fern. My cell phone camera had been refusing to edit because it doesn't yet realize that I have deleted photos and freed up space (things are actually in some sort of limbo for 30 days after you delete them, then they go away for real, unless I find how to really, REALLY through them away). So I haven't been able to lighten these, though most not as dark as this.  It's pretty sparse, I want to make one with larger leaves and more coverage. Let's just say this fern has been growing in a very dark place!

Flowers, a waterlily leaf, working on leaf stripes and a horsetail (inspired by one in a book called Botanicum). Again, adding color made some sketchy sketches look much more intentional.

'cattails, bamboo bits and random leaves. I should just take a journal page and do nothing but leaves, nothing but bamboo, making notes of what worked.

Then my ToolWiz seemed to have recovered it's senses to some degree and I could make some digital daisy art without it crashing. This is a embossed version of the first image.

And then I layered it with several backgrounds.  Once I go digital I feel like I am under control again, still, it's not as rewarding as learning how to draw things, because I already know how to accomplish things digitally.

Playing with colors and opacity in layers. Underneath is a photo of a Gelli print fabric that I am about to do some beading and stitching on. Real meets drawing meets imaginary.....

Ahhhh, this was fun! The weather has finally turned rainy and so I spent much of today alternating doing art and taking brisk walks while it wasn't raining. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and time for traditional cooking, about the only time I willingly spend the day in the kitchen.