I'm consumed by the last week of Teen Summer Reading (Book Cafe was Wednesday, and tonight is Open Mic Night and Karaoke!), so I haven't much to show lately. But one product of that was a "six-word memoir" for which I did a visual in my sketchbook, hoping the kids who took the writing workshop for these would go home and make them visual, too. So far, no results except for mine:
This isn't strictly true--I do MAKE time to read, but the clock face is significant, because it usually ends up being around 2 a.m. I read a lot more before I was a librarian, but that's also because it's a full-time job and before that I was self-employed, which gave me more opportunity to indulge. Still, it is ironic to work in an environment in which you are constantly surrounded by books and arrive home on Friday night only to realize you have nothing to read for the weekend! This was my entry for "wacky."
I cheated and combined two other July prompts: "en plein air," and "plants." This is my lone (but prolific) banana pepper plant in the back garden. I drew it while sitting on the grass (the plein air part), but my legs went to sleep, so I moved and painted it from inside the patio, which would account for my forgetting to leave highlights anywhere on those shiny peppers. Oh well…live and learn. I did enjoy the muted color scheme dictated by the atypical gray July day.
I'm always amazed, when I attempt to draw a botanical piece, by the infinite variety of leaf shapes on one plant. The plant, from a distance, has a distinguishable type of leaf, and yet when you start to draw the individual leaves, every one has character--rounded edge, jagged edge, color variation. It can make you kind of crazy if you're attempting an accurate rendering!
