Mountain Ash Buds in Art Stix

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is future.

I'd kind of wanted to do something more detailed this time around, but my recovering wrist doesn't like to be out of the brace long enough for pen & ink or anything like that. Macro it is, then, and I got out the Art Stix for a quick doodle of a Mountain Ash (some might know it better as Rowan) flower bud.

It's a scribble, but ah well. It's something, anyway, and I've been busy enough lately that not many other somethings have happened.

And if proto-flowers aren't the ultimate hint of the future this time of year (late spring and all), I don't know what is.

Stripped Down in tinted charcoal

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is farewell.

Goodbye, winter gear. Too bad, so sad. Don't come out again until next November.



Of course, since this is Alberta it'll probably be out again next week.

Sigh.

Sunflower Scaffold in tinted charcoal and Derwent Metallics

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is train.

I like to train morning glories up my sunflowers. I like the way it looks, and since I'm container-gardening on a balcony the two-for-one in the same space is a nice bonus.

Now, if only spring would make a slight thought about appearing...

A couple of work things

What you're seeing here is Early Blue Violet (Viola adunca) above, and Prairie Crocus or Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla patens) below.

These doodles aren't terribly exciting since they were designed more or less as clip art for in-house publications. With any luck there may be a few more of them if I get focused (or at least more focused than I've been managing lately) this weekend.

This weekend.

Which I'll be spending at home rather than at my father's place.

Because the impending SNOWSTORM means that the roads may be absolute crap.

Yep. This is the closest I'm going to get to any sort of spring flower for the next while, I'm afraid.

Both of these artistic wonders are Inktense base with Graphitint details. I didn't bother to wash the Graphitint, so I guess I could have just said coloured graphite and saved myself the extra typing...

Ah well.

Incidentally, I really need to get myself a more purplish Intense pencil if I'm going to keep doing spring flowers. This fuchsia isn't really cutting it, but I figured that it would do for what I want to use it for. They're mostly recognisable at any rate, and I guess that's what counts.

Pysanky in conte crayon and metallic graphite pencils

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is egg. And I see it's been over a month since I did an IF. No particular reason, really. I've just been mostly puttering lately, and haven't come up with much that I wanted to go to the trouble of scanning and posting.

This week's doodle features a part of my heritage that I know almost nothing about.

My grandfather was Ukrainian (well, Ukrainian-Canadian), but he died long before I was ever thought of. All I really know about my Ukrainian side is that my grandfather made his own pyroghies, but I don't even know if he pronounced it pyroghies, pyrohies, or varenyky.

And these aren't pyroghies anyway.

The pysanka (pysanky, plural) is the decorated egg you find as part of the Ukrainian Easter celebration. It's done using a wax-resist or batik-style method: you draw wax lines on a raw egg for the white part of the design, dip the egg into your first (usually, lightest) colour, draw more lines to add to the design, and repeat with as many dyes as you're planning to use. Remove the wax with a candle or a brief dip in hot water, and you end up with an extremely intricately decorated egg. Traditionally, each family had its own designs that were handed down from mother to daughter. There's lots of info out there if you're interested in more details, or here's instructions on how to do it yourself.

I'd love to try it, even though with my self-flagellating personality it would probably be an exercise in start again... start again again...and start again...

Anyway. A little ways north of me there are plenty of settlements that celebrate Ukrainian founding and Ukrainian heritage, even to the point of building the world's largest pysanka. Given that and the current holiday, I thought that it was more than appropriate for the prompt.

Midas Has... in soluble graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is whisper. I seem to be stuck in mythology with IF entries lately, but what can ya do?

This one comes from Greek mythology again. Midas (yep, he of the golden touch) became a follower of Pan after accidentally turning his daughter to gold. At one point Pan challenged Apollo to a music contest. Apollo was judged to have won, but Midas fervently sided with Pan. Apollo scoffed that he must have ass's ears to think that, and gave him some as a punishment.

Midas was mortified and hid his ears under a turban so no one would know. He charged his wife (in some versions his barber, but I figured that I may as well stick with my series of inexplicably featureless females) never to tell a soul. The secret ate at her to the point where she nearly went mad, and in desperation she dug a hole and whispered the secret into it. Unfortunately for both her and Midas, reeds later grew on the soil covering the hole, and every time the wind blew over them they whispered Midas has ass's ears over the land.

Poor Midas never had much mythological luck.

As usual (so usual that I don't know why I bother to say it anymore), the scanner's done away with most of the wash. There's enough there to give the idea, though. Oh, and if anyone's wondering, this particular graphite is Derwent Graphitint. Limited colours, but at least it means that I'm not doing everything in greys when I'm doing the soluble graphite thing.

The scanner would probably love it if I'd stop doing the soluble graphite thing at all...

Tiamat in pen & ink and soluble graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is storm.

Tiamat is... well, my knowledge of Babylonian mythology is sketchy at best, so I'll leave you to look her up for yourself this time. To be honest, I just wanted a sea goddess.

I don't know why I'm doing goddesses lately. I'm not usually a goddessy person.

The scanner killed this one as usual, but I was expecting it. Maybe I'll start signing my posted work "D.O. & Scanner". It's pretty much deserving a co-credit by this point. Anyway, please just do me the favour of assuming that there is actually a bit of sublteness (and shading, even) in the original. My co-creator apparently didn't think that it was necessary.

Just for fun I put this through a couple of quick filters after giving up on the hope of making the above look anything like the original. She kind of looks cool this way, really. Maybe I just should have posted this and called it digital art.

Ah well.