A new leaf

Two of my New Year's resolutions at work here: (1) Draw something every day and (2) Post more often. So, even though this is a rather humble drawing, I'm sharing it.

I adore cyclamen, with their heart-shaped leaves. The white of the flowers is the whitest, freshest white there is, and the way they bloom sort of upside-down and inside-out makes me smile. In fact, this was just a drawing to sort of "get acquainted" with the shapes and structure; I'm thinking that I could have some fun doing some close-ups of the blooms and/or some detailed color pieces.

 It took about an hour, including the time I had to go outside and calm my chickens down. (The squirrels find it amusing to sit in the trees above them and shower them with leaves. Clearly, squirrels rank a bit higher than chickens on the intelligence chart.)

I'm never quite happy with how pencil sketches scan. I tried taking a shot of it with my camera, but my photography needs work (another resolution). If you scan pencil and colored pencil artwork and feel like sharing what scanner you've had success with, I'd love to hear from you!

Illustration Friday: Highlight

I'll bet none of you got an emu egg for Christmas! This treasure was presented to me on Christmas Eve, as my son arrived home and unpacked his cooler...a gift to me from his girlfriend, who has friends with an emu farm. I didn't know what it was until he told me—it looked like an avocado, only bigger and more blue. Isn't it amazing?

When I cut a small hole in the bottom to drain it out, I noticed that there is a lighter turquoise color under the outer dark teal, and then a white layer beneath that. If you look online, you can see all kinds of beautiful carved emu eggs, taking advantage of this unique layering of colors, but I plan on displaying as it is—it's so beautiful in its natural state. (I may have overdone the highlight a bit, but after all, that is the word of the week for Illustration Friday! It's so nice to be back on IF; I hope to be posting regularly again now that the holiday hubbub has subsided.)

Since you don't really get a sense of its actual size from my drawing, here it is next to an egg from one of my girls:

Now that I'm emu-obsessed, I found this adorable photo of some hatchlings. If I only had a bigger piece of land...!

More new crayons

Last year at this time, I wrote a post about the childhood thrill that a new box of crayons would bring. (I'd just received my set of 132 Prismacolor pencils for Christmas!) Well, Prismacolor recently added 18 new colors, so guess what I got from my husband this year? Since I also got an annoying cold for Christmas—I'll take a lump of coal next year, Santa—today was the first day that I felt like playing. I just had to start by making swatches—the ones I made last year have been invaluable—but since these won't fit into my original pages, there may be another swatchapalooza happening really soon.

It's hard to believe that 132 colors didn't already cover all the bases, but a few of these are really nice additions, even if they don't have great names. The "Sap Green Light" is beautiful—when you do a lot of botanical drawings, lots of really good, natural greens are important. And the "Dioxazine Purple Hue" nicely fills a gap in the deep violet range. There are three "neon" colors, which are new for me. I didn't think I'd care for them, but as I did the swatches, I was kind of intrigued:  the color really jumps off  the paper, and they'll be fun to experiment with; I'm curious to see how they layer and get along with the other colors.

So, tomorrow, at long last, the drawing resumes. It's been a busy month, but I've just packed away the last of my Christmas decorations. Happily, my New Year's weekend consists solely of fresh Dungeness crab...and fresh new pencils.

A Mistletoe Moment

'Tis the season:
I'm scurrying around this week preparing for a holiday party, so I'm pausing for a little swig of eggnog
(no alcohol or I won't be scurrying much longer) and to re-post this little drawing from last December.
(You can read the original post here.)

I love fresh mistletoe, but it dries out so quickly, and even worse, it can drop its poisonous berries on the floor. So, this year, I found this adorable kit at Paper Source, one of my favorite shops. I'm not usually a fan of artificial flowers and plants, I must admit. Perhaps it's because paper starts out its life as a plant, but paper flowers retain a certain natural charm for me. Isn't it cute? It won't dry out or poison anyone, and I can use it again next year!

Next week looks to be a bit calmer—
I'm hoping to steal a day to draw and catch up on blog visits before Christmas. 

Cheers!

One year!

My little blog is one year old today! 

I was quite anxious when I hit "Publish Post" for the first time last December 1, but if I'd only known how much fun blogging is, I wouldn't have worried. Thank you, thank you to those of you that visit; because of your comments, I've gotten to know some wonderful  people. If you visit and have never left a comment, please do—I'd love to hear from you. I'd also like to thank my friend Vicki Thorne, who was so encouraging and helpful when I started, as well as a friend of hers at a lovely blog called The Blue Remembered Hills, who was one of the first to put me on his blog list—I still get visitors from his site almost daily.

When I published my first post, I commented about the serendipity of it being December 1, as I'm a bit obsessed with advent calendars. While I'm most fond of the traditional paper ones with little doors that open, I love the little set of Victorian-inspired numbers that I bought a couple of years ago—that's today's pictured above.

So, happy first day of December, happy birthday to my little blog, and most of all, thank you for visiting and being part of my blogging life.