Saturday Flowers
I used to avoid drawing from life. I found it limiting when in reality everywhere I look I see limitless inspiration. My eyes must have been closed. The beauty is in life
This week's bouquet (August 15). I couldn't stop myself and ended up going overboard with ink.
At the beginning of the Summer we took a family trip back to North Carolina and stayed the week with our friends, Justin and Mary. When we arrived I noticed there was a cute bouquet of nice, but expired flowers in a mason jar. The next morning the flowers were gone, replaced with fresh new flowers from the local farmer's market. Turned out that was their routine, fresh flowers every Saturday. My husband liked this idea and implemented the routine in our house the week we returned from our vacation. It's a great way to bring something new but not permanent into the house every week. Another added and unexpected bonus is that the flowers provide me with a load of creative inspiration. The past few weeks I have felt compelled to illustrate Saturday's flowers. It's my way of keeping them around past their expiration.
I've also been using these bouquets as an opportunity to explore two things I have a tendency to avoid mostly out of laziness; watercolors and still life. Here's a line I recently scribbled into my sketchbook while reflecting on the topic:
"I used to avoid drawing from life. I found it limiting when in reality everywhere I look I see limitless inspiration. My eyes must have been closed. The beauty is in life."
A simple bouquet of carnations and daisies got me started.
My illustration of early August's sunflower bouquet. These were so pretty!
Feeling Imaginative
When I was a kid I was always day dreaming. My imagination was so alive it was almost uncontrollable, especially in 4th grade math class where I missed out on foundational math because I was too busy drawing happy troll looking characters on my desk and giving them haircuts with an eraser or escaping to the away dreamlands that would spill onto my paper.
Adding pen over my pencil sketch
I added color using watercolor pencils and a wet brush.
When I was a kid I was always day dreaming. My imagination was so alive it was almost uncontrollable, especially in 4th grade math class where I missed out on foundational math because I was too busy drawing happy troll looking characters on my desk and giving them haircuts with an eraser or escaping to the away dreamlands that would spill onto my paper.
This morning I woke up early like I always do to get right to work, I feel like I'm most creative as soon as I get out of bed, before the sun comes up, but to my disappointment, there was an internet outage and the project I was hoping to work on was a website. It was cold and rainy outside. I missed out on the perfect morning to sleep in. For a minute I almost allowed myself to get upset about outside forces interfering with my productivity but then I realized this was the perfect opportunity to do something I've been trying to find the time to do all week; draw something for myself, for fun. So I drew a tree house and as I drew it, I was suddenly back in fourth grade, escaping to a fun far away place where it wasn't rainy or cold.