English Oak Seedling in pen and ink

No scanner as usual since I'm at my father's place, but the photo's enough to give the idea until I have the chance to scan the thing at work. If I remember.

Anyway, this week's Illustration Friday prompt is skinny. I went with an oak seedling (figuring seedlings are pretty skinny compared to the trees they'll become) and used my Pigma brush pen. Bit of a different thing for me since I usually go for more detail with the Micron, but it was kind of fun to be more graphic for a change.

Source material was a combination of seedlings from stock photos. We definitely don't have any English Oaks in my part of the world.

Hold Fast in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is fast. Fast is just one of those weird words, you know? Like cleave. I've always found it a bit odd that cleave can mean both split up or adhere to. Fast? Could be speedy, could be steady, could be immovable...

Well, you see where my head went. Not sure why, but there it is. And I'm also not sure that this thing would qualify as immovable, but I'd hope it'd be relatively steady.

Oh, and I do know that this is a massively outdated style of anchor. I'm the very definition of a landlubber, though, so when I think anchor this is what I see. And although I'd consider you pretty insane if you used a non-braided natural fibre rope to tie your anchor with nowadays, I think my anchor hitch is reasonably accurate. If I remember any of my knots anymore...

Twining Honeysuckle Leaf in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is frozen.

Gah.

I have a bit of a personal thing against thinking about frozen, and our recent cold snap was all too much of a reminder that our lovely Alberta winter's not far off. I didn't want to draw cold. I couldn't even make myself draw ice cream, for pity's sake. So...

Here's frozen as in not moving rather than as in cold. This was based on a photo I took a couple of years ago. It had rained, and the surface of the underside of this Twining Honeysuckle leaf had caused a few droplets to remain rather than run off. They became interesting little lens, selectively magnifying bits and pieces of the leaf in slightly distorted ways.

That... erm... counts as frozen, right?

Hmmm...

I was just looking through the blog's Picasa album because I'm full of myself that way (I'm so very much kidding, but click on the "Doodles" slideshow on the sidebar if you're a sucker for similar punishment), and I couldn't help but notice that I've been working in pen an awful lot lately for someone who spent a good deal of time absolutely wedded to the feel of smudging graphite around on paper.

Do you suppose that means anything beyond the fact that I've been too lazy to do an actual finished piece for a while?

What if I add the comment that I'm sort of beginning to like the whole pen thing?

Just goes to show you don't know 'til you try, I suppose.

Flying V in watercolour

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is flying. This is the time of year when we see an awful lot of flying V's (and I don't mean the guitars) as the geese start heading south for the winter.

Ever notice how much geese flying in formation look like abstracts rather than birds in silhouette? I hadn't until just now...

Germs in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is germs. Having spent what seems like the last month trying to shake a very stubborn cold, the idea of doodling germs didn't exactly appeal to me.

So, we have this instead. An abstractish line study (sure, let's call it that) of something that's been all too familiar to me in the past while. And what is it, exactly? Well, maybe I should put the answer down in the comments for those who are keen to guess...