Day 16 of the Drawing Challenge

Draw Inspiration…

Here’s just what came out:

Nature bed, pen and ink on paper, approx 8 x 8″

Girls raised by wolves eh?

Today’s art attack was inspired by reading the beginning chapter of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell – author of Swamplandia.

Here is an excerpt:
“…with mosquito-blackened sills; a tin roof that hums with the memory of rain. I love it here. Whenever the wind gusts in off the river, the sky rains leaves and feathers. During mating season, the bedroom window rattles with the ardor of birds.
Now the thunder makes the window glass ripple like wax paper. Summer rain is still the most comforting sound that I know… In the distance, an alligator bellows…”

In the studio

Deep in the Forest, mixed media, 10 x 11"

Positivity

Click on the page below from my sketchbook to see a bigger image and read some quotations that I recorded:

Sketchbook page, ink on paper, 5 x 7"

Somewhere to read

My librarian mother recently noted that I draw and paint many stacks of books in my scenes. And this is very true. Reading is one of my life’s biggest obsessions after art… and maybe food. I really love food. Art can be an escape for me, and so can books… so why not bring the two together as much as possible and enjoy a double dose of what I love most?

While today’s piece of art does not contain any heaps of paperbacks, I’d like you to imagine reading there. I’ve drawn the same bench in a tangly shaded space and a sun-soaked desert space. If you choose to read in the jungle space be sure to take bug repellant and if you chose to read in the sun, remember sunscreen and shades! Nothing worse than being blinded by trying to read the glaring white page.

The Bench, watercolour and ink on paper, 5 x 10"

Tangly wild lawns

I began this lovely Tuesday morning with an activity I normally reserve for Saturdays: weeding! The front flower-bed… (er… cacti-bed) was overrun with all sorts of different weeds. I counted six or seven different types, although the only one that really matters to me is the one I call “evil spike”. Its little burrs break your skin through thick gardening gloves! So you can imagine how I felt when I knelt on a whole clump. They are NOT the soft sticky type of burrs I grew up with in Canada. Those you could get in your hair or on the back of your pants and walk around for days with them stuck there without knowing. Nope, you know instantly when you get these buggers stuck to you. yowch.

I’ve decided today I don’t like weeding tangly wild lawns. But I do like drawing tangly wild lawns. That is an activity far more suited to my temperament.

Side note: Tangly Wild Lawns would make a good band name no?

Tangly Wild Lawn, watercolour and ink on paper, 5 x 8"

Gardening day

I spent my morning weeding the yard before it got too scorching. I now have green leafy plants on the mind… except the one I painted is a bit more pleasing to the eye than the ones I was yanking out of the dry earth…

Blossoming, ink on paper, 5 x 7"

A change in temperature

I thought it was time to post a drawing of winter… this was drawn/painted from a picture I took this winter. What is happening under all the snow? It’s a gorgeous world of faded autumn colours and rotting vegetation and cool shadows. A nice contrast to the heat waves of summer so many of us are experiencing.

In Winter, watercolour on paper, 11 x 14"

An earthy abstraction to end the week

untitled, watercolour on paper, 6 x 9"

A second sketchbook Sunday

Here are some free flow drawings from my sketchbook that I did today. I wasn’t really thinking, just following my intuition. A lot of nature imagery comes to my pen when I draw and think of  nothing. Leaves and branches seem to always be there just waiting for me.

Pine Cone, ink in sketchbook

leaf abstraction, ink in sketchbook

Leaves, ink in sketchbook