Illustration Friday: Yield

Last summer, we enjoyed a bountiful yield from our vegetable garden.

I fell in love with these beautiful "Royal Burgundy" beans, a variety from Botanical Interests—I adore the artwork on their seed packets! The deep purple beans turn back to green when they're cooked, but they're gorgeous raw, and so much easier to see on the bushes than green ones. (I posted this when I drew it in July, but since it wasn't for Illustration Friday, I thought I'd share it again.)

I actually started out with another drawing for this topic (some lovely oranges from a friend's tree), but am not thrilled with the result:

I used a textured, toned paper, which is usually a fun change for me, but I soon realized that the grey-green paper wasn't a great choice for rendering oranges. You can't layer colored pencil very heavily on this type of paper, so you have to achieve the colors you want with one or two passes instead of the many that I sometimes use.  I think that they turned out looking more like peaches than oranges! I did play around a bit with the background, which I tend to leave untouched—something that's good for me to explore, I think. The textured paper does help to create an interesting backdrop. Who knows, maybe I'll try the oranges again on my good ol' white Strathmore Bristol.

Meanwhile, here in Northern California, it's about time to plant seeds for this summer's garden...I can't wait!

Birthday Bouquet

Prismacolor colored pencils on Strathmore Bristol, vellum finish

Back on Washington's birthday, I mentioned a birthday-related piece I've been working on. So, here you go: this is a drawing that I did for my sister's birthday. I took the birth flower for the month of her birthday, and combined it with the birth flower for the month of her daughter's birthday, for a little "family bouquet". And since her three cats are an important part of her family, I tucked in three sprigs of catmint in for good measure, and tied it all up with a ribbon bearing their last name.

I love the symbolism of flowers. Besides birth month flowers, there's a whole tradition of floral meanings. Floriography, or communicating through the coded language of flowers, was especially popular in the Victorian era—I find it fascinating. I recently read a really wonderful novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh called The Language of Flowers. It's a contemporary story, but a lot of the plot revolves around flowers and their traditional symbolism. (It's also set in the San Francisco Bay area, where I live, which made it doubly interesting to me.)

I'm planning on doing one of these bouquets for my own immediate family; it's a concept that I think would work well as a customized gift for weddings and births as well, don't you think?

Word verification craziness

The new word verification on Blogger is driving me nuts. 

Until recently, we were only required to type in one very legible, nonsensical word. Now, there are two swirly, fuzzy difficult-to-read words that will, supposedly, prove that I'm not a robot. Last night, I was making my weekly rounds of blogs to view Illustration Friday entries, and got so frustrated at word verification that I finally logged off and ate ice cream.

I've noticed that some of you have removed it. I have done the same, and hopefully won't get tons of spam. (I'm already getting way too may spam visits from Russian websites, even with word verification turned on.)  But they've made it a bit tricky to turn off:

1.  First of all, you can't be in the new-and-improved (hmmm...) Blogger interface. So, if you're on the new dashboard, click on the little gear wheel up on the right, and select "Old Blogger Interface".
2.  Once you're at the old dashboard (I've missed you, old buddy!), go to Settings, then Comments, and then scroll down to where you can choose to turn off Word Verification.

Whew.

Birthdays

Presidents' Day? Bah, humbug. February used to belong to Lincoln and Washington. I grew up knowing that the twelfth is Abe's birthday, and today is George's. But now I guess they have to share the month with the likes of Millard Fillmore.

So, in honor of Washington's birthday, here's another of my vintage postcards that I started sharing with you earlier in the month. This one was sent to my husband's grandfather on February 23, 1910, and reads (uncorrected):

Wright soon (up in the corner)
Dear Friend, I recived your cards but have been real sick since you left your trunck is all right and it is hear when everver you ge ready for it no mail has come for you since you left
James Rider

I am working on a fun birthday-related drawing that I had hoped to post today, but it's not quite finished, and doesn't read well as a work-in-progress piece. It will be up here in the next couple of days!

Happy Birthday, George!

Illustration Friday: Popularity

I'm interrupting my "botanical hearts" series to bring you this sketch of some hearts of a different sort. These classic little confections enjoy a soaring popularity this time of year. Nothing says "Valentine's Day" quite like conversation hearts.

Oddly enough, they're kind of challenging to draw. I spent a couple of hours on a more "photorealistic" drawing, only to scrap the darn thing. There's something about that type on them that trips me up: it's very imperfectly stamped onto the candies, but that imperfection is hard to duplicate. So I decided to do a quickie drawing, and I think that the more casual sketch sort of suits these little hearts.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day!