December 27, 2011

    Today's drawing is of an angel wing begonia.

December 6, 2011

    A simple drawing of a single money plant pod. I wanted to see if I could reproduce something of the satiny surface, and I needed a few easier, quicker drawings to do in the last couple of days since I've been feeling under the weather and gotten behind.

November 22, 2011

    I have spent a few days away... so I picked up this stone (barely indicated to the lower left) intending to draw It late at night, but then moved on to drawing the plant (perhaps related to an aloe) on the bedside stand.

November 13, 2011

    A quick line drawing of a kholrabi from the Farmers' Market will do for tonight. I wasn't sure what this odd purple thing was, although I see them around, so I had to look it up in image search once I got it home. 
    Someone was asking why I picked out a vegetable I had no clue about... and the answer is that I wanted to draw it, of course! Still, we are always willing to try eating a new vegetable. Some are better than others - my sons suffer for my art!

November 5, 2011

    Since I have gotten a few days behind, I ended up doing two drawings today - the texture patch tree below and this simple drawing of a tiny purple wildflower from our dog walk. The little purple flowers are only about one cm long. Sometimes the tiniest flowers have surprisingly complex structures and even elaborate markings.

August 6, 2011

     This is the stem from a bok choy. When you've pulled off all of the big leaves you usually have just a core left, but this time the core had smaller bok choy starts all along the length of it, and it had such a bizarre, bonsai look that I immediately knew I had to draw it. It could be a plant from another planet...
     I have already stuck a few more normal looking cores in the ground and they seem to be growing, so I did the same thing with this one. Our turtle will no doubt find them and chow down! 

July 31, 2011

    I'm so tired I've already fallen asleep once... sitting up. It's my first night back home, but I'm only going to post one sketch tonight. I'll catch up over the next few days with my posting. 
    This is an air plant sitting in a flute, and it was on the table in the B&B where we stayed. I sketched it in about two sittings over two of the first few days we were there, but I also did some other sketches and/or starts, so this one counts as one - for the 31st. 

July 3, 2011

    This is one stem of the black bamboo growing in the side yard by the river.

June 5, 2011

    I pulled up a sprig of some type of tiny yellow wild clover on a walk the other day and stuck it in a plastic bottle I kept from when someone had bought drinking water on a car trip. I really like this thin, cheap plastic bottle - I wish it were glass or something durable. The shape strikes a nice balance between "cute" (it looks sort of like a little alien) and clean, attractive design, and is just the right amount of water for plenty of practical purposes. 
    Once again, I can see - only after I scan and post the drawing - where I have distorted the shape of the bottle by flattening the right side a bit. Maybe toward the end of the year I might go back and revisit the drawings I've done and correct some things... if I think it would be a good exercise at that point. I'll wait and see...  

May 18, 2011

    There have been two reasons not to work any further on the earlier garden sketch. One has been the weather, which has been so grey as to keep the bench wet even though it never quite rains (mists, kinda sprinkles...). The other has been the odour from the dracunculus vulgaris. It's a very cool plant, like a gigantic maroon (almost black on the 2+ foot central spathe) jack-in-the-pulpit, and adds to the tropical feel of the garden, but it attracts flies. The way it attracts flies is to smell like a mule has died in the back yard. It usually blooms for about a week, and the odour is only intense for about two days (I've experimented with ways to tone it down to no avail), but this cool damp weather has had it in bloom for closer to two weeks and while the odour hasn't peaked yet, it comes on stronger when the mist lifts somewhat. We have an approach-avoidance relationship, Dracunculus and I...