Capturing Flowers

I had planned to finished up a second butterfly binding book this afternoon, but the deck garden and warm weather were calling to me instead. The garden has turned from sorry to delightful and I have been spending many mornings doing a little reading in its presence. I still wonder at my desire to sketch florals but there's no denying I do enjoy it, from the close observation that sometimes reveals surprises to the matching of colors to the methodical movement of pen or pencil as each petal, stem and leaf is reproduced as closely as my skill allows. So one afternoon it was the pink Dianthus I tackled with colored pencil, this afternoon it was the rich maroon one along with the single osteospermum bloom that has finally arrived (upper right in above pic), outlining each in micron pen before adding colored pencil. As for the row of faces at the top of the spread, I did those a few weeks ago, an old Draw Tip Tuesday exercise where you draw a bunch of thumb shapes on the page, then add features, hair, whatever, to turn them into people. Some winners, some definitely a bit odd.

The Dianthus indeed had a surprise for me upon closer inspection: white stamen curling up from the center. Adding white is tricky; the white colored pencil didn't show at all while a white gel pen fared no better. I don't think I confessed to you that, after all my negativity and misgivings about Posca pens, I ended up buying some. There were coupons and vouchers involved to bring the price down, and because I couldn't make up my mind about what colors to get, I ended up splurging on this set of . . . yes you are seeing it right in the photo . . . sixteen colors. Sheesh. But I was glad I had them, including a white one that worked like a charm drawing in those stamens. It's making me eager to experiment with them more. And, in case you didn't know, they work on fabric too.

Not that I was compelled to draw them, but I did notice that the lavender geranium has new blooms and I still can't get over that color for a geranium. Perhaps I should sketch it.

I've been doing a lot of close cloud observation too lately. I've watched many tutorials on how to paint clouds and it's a tricky proposition. And any time I've tried adding them to a quilt either as applique or quilting stitches, I've only frustrated myself. But I observe anyway with thoughts of how the various ones I see are "constructed" and could be painted. Every now and then I see a formation like I've not seen before and think that if I could in fact reproduce it, no one would believe it really existed. I tried to capture one such cloud with my very poor cell camera, but if you look closely, the cloud on the right looks a bit like someone dragged a comb through it, lines running from upper right to lower left. The cloud to the left looked more like someone had taken a brush to it.