Another Iceland Poppy

This time in Aquatone watercolour pencils. The colour's a bit faked in this photo, but not nearly as much as it would have been if I'd posted the scan instead. Holy Whomever does the scanner hate orange, and me without any editing software worth mentioning.

Ah well, this gives the idea.

Cross-posting to my entry for this week's IF prompt.

Iceland Poppy in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is cultivate. And this (well, not the picture; the type of plant) is one of the first things I ever cultivated.

I grew up calling them Icelandic Poppies, but the internet tells me that the more common name is Iceland Poppies these days. They grow in my father's yard like weeds, but they're very happy weeds for me partly because they provide some of the first colour we get in spring and partly because I can vaguely, very vaguely, remember "helping" my mother plant some when I was very young. If you want the more complete version of the story and are willing to suffer through some indifferent poetry, check here.

I come from a gardening family (on both the maternal and paternal sides), and even today my balcony gets planted up each spring. Not with poppies, but there are plenty of other nostalgic things to make up for their lack. I'm a bit of an old-style flower buff, I guess.

I know that this particular poppy isn't looking terribly poppy-ish, but when I was going through my photos to find some poppy inspiration the shape of this one appealed to me. I'm hoping to get a little more doodling in yet this weekend, and if I get another poppy done (hey... maybe I'll even aim for colour. What a thought. A coloured poppy) I'll post it up later.

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Ok, there's a coloured poppy of sorts here...

Birdish thing in acrylic and oil pastel

Just trying out some things with resist. Might lead to something; might not.

Oh and the phantom drips are there on purpose, sort of. I had more stuff going on in the background, but I decided it wasn't doing anything for me.

Seven-spot Ladybird in pen and ink...

...and Inktense wash, which partly got lost in the scanner. There's enough left to give the idea, though.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is warning, and nerd naturalist here went with warning colours. Red or red/orange insects like ladybird beetles are sending a warning signal to birds that it's not the best idea to eat them. Some red insects don't taste good (not that most birds would care, since taste isn't their most important sense), while others, like Monarch butterflies, can be downright poisonous. A bird may eat one red insect, but isn't likely to eat another one after it gets sick.

Kind of sucks for the insect that was sacrificed to teach the bird a lesson, I guess, but it's a good survival strategy for the rest of the species.

Crow Swarm in watercolour pencil

Hmmm. Maybe I should change that post title. Sounds way too much like snow storm.

Ah well.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is swarm, and this is... well, I suppose it's technically more of a murder than a swarm. I really think that conference would be a better collective noun for crows anyway, since they always seem to have some sort of agenda.

I was going to do a ladybird swarm for the prompt like those we sometimes have in late summer here, but I guess I just wasn't feeling the bugginess today.

Strata in watercolour pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is layer. Nerd that I am, my mind went to the fact that at work (when I'm teaching forest studies or basic geology) I'll often have to remind the students that stratum is just the word scientists use for layer.

When I did my field botany in university, I found out that the old saw can't see the forest for the trees has more than a bit of truth. If all you notice is the trees when you're studying a forest, then you're not going to get very far. Amongst many other things, it's important to study the layers. Each forest has several strata, and each stratum affects what happens in the stratum beneath it. Each layer blocks out some of the light and some of the moisture from the next one, but each layer also provides shelter to the next. If one of the layers suddenly goes missing (say, because of clear-cutting or a massive wind storm), the remaining can't function the way they've evolved to. The forest inevitably changes.

Because of the relatively open canopy of a deciduous forest there may be a whole whack (scientifically speaking -- ha!) of layers beneath the trees, each with its own distinctive plants and animals. In the more closed canopy of a conifer forest, things can look pretty barren in comparison.

This is the kind of thing that makes my brain happy, but I'm probably boring the snot out of a few people by now so I'll stop here. Next time you're out for a walk in the forest, though, why not see if you can recognise its layers? When you start to think of things horizontally instead of vertically it can certainly give you a different view of the workings.

Begonia in watercolour pencil

A quick sketch to keep my mostly-nonfunctioning brain in some kind of gear.

Scan's not giving quite the whole thing, but it's not bad. Picture the flower with a slightly more orange tinge, and the leaves a bit less blue. Then we're closer.