Ode to Flowers

I am just about to burst to share this. I spent all day Friday and Saturday alone in the studio creating!! This collage incorporates a lot of my artwork - small backgrounds and little pieces - a lot of fabric pieces that I drew on with watercolor crayons. Such a fun piece!

My "Ode to Flowers" LOL

Finished Zinnia in Colored Pencil and this week's quick sketches

Finally completed this very evening - hot off the drawing board...

5" x 7" - colored pencil

(Look back through previous posts to see the WIP during stages of completion.)

Having been sick with some sort of mean-spirited virus all week I did manage to do a couple of sketches, this one while waiting to pick my daughter up at school - some quick gesture figure drawings of the students on the football field

and from my imagination, I created this cozy place, which I desparately needed on Friday when I was feeling quite poorly just before going home from work sick -- again. I managed to work a whole day and a half last week!

Here's to a better and more productive week next week! Happy Saturday night everyone!

Making Slow Progress

Still working on the zinnia, sporadically, in short little bursts. That is an upside to colored pencils, you can take as much time as you want on a piece. The downside is that I tend to lose enthusiasm and interest in a piece.

For the past week, I've been reading voraciously - I finished a Christian fiction novel BETRAYAL by Randall Arthur and now at the recommendation of my boss have started Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel - 662 pages!

I also purchased a book last week on hand lettering http://www.amazon.com/Hand-Lettering-Simple-Creative-Scrapbooks/dp/1600594727/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253478314&sr=8-1

While waiting in the doctor's office after my purchase, I practiced brush letting in my moleskine

This week I hope to finish the zinnia and do more with the lettering. Have a great week everybody! Right now I'm off to a friend's house to make lasagna - for the first time!

Flower a la Butterfly

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

September 23, 2008 - 2nd day of fall

Today's sketches. The one above is done first with Pigma Micron 08 Pen, then Inktense pencils, then I got carried away with watercolor, gouache, and finally colored pencils.

Both are sketched from life inspired by the pitcher of zinnias on my desk at work - I continue my zinnia fascination...