Viola adunca in watercolour

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is ahead.  Around here, Early Blue Violet (and yes, I know that it's purple.  Botany-types are weird about calling purples blues) blooms weeks ahead of most of our other native plants.  If you don't count the trees, that is.  Believe me, my sinuses can inform you that the poplar trees have been in bloom for a while now.

Anyway.  My father has these growing wild all over the yard, and it's always great to see a bit of colour when most other things are still struggling to get past their winter browns.

This was a quick watecolour sketch (ok, Derwent Aquatone, to be honest.  But I was using a brush...) in my moleskine.

Just for the heck of it, here's a very wonky picture of a really quick sketch from a couple of weeks ago showing the non-native species in my father's yard that was ahead of... well, pretty much everything, as crocuses usually are.  And in case anyone wonders, they managed to finish blooming without being eaten by deer.  Now let's all knock wood for the tulips, ok?

Recycled flower in... well...

Construction paper, stretched-out paper cup, and felt marker.

Craft day at work, yes.

Happy Earth Day, everyone.

Chain in graphite and coloured pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is linked.  Not a surprise with my ecology background that I started thinking about links in nature.  Which narrows things down NOT AT ALL, unfortunately for inspiration, because everything out there is linked in some way.

I settled on a couple of different links.  First, pollinator and flower.  Pretty serious link there since each has, over time, adapted its structures to suit the other.  That can cause problems when a plant becomes dependent on just one pollinator, especially when pollinators are starting to disappear.

My pollinator will be disappearing pretty soon, if she's not careful.  The second link here is between predator and prey.  Enough said there, I guess, except to mention that I think Goldenrod Spiders are pretty cool.  But then, I think all spiders are pretty cool.  I'm weird that way.

This was done with graphite pencil on textured paper, and included liberal use of my left middle finger.  Erm, for blending.  I don't have any stumps with me just now.  I added a slight bit of coloured pencil to give the whole thing a faded, antiquey look.  Did it work?  I'm sort of on the fence, to be honest.  Posting it anyway.

Am I... green?

Yep.  Looks green to me.

Just felt like a change in scenery, to be honest.  Not sure if it'll stay yet, but I figured I may as well give it a try for a while.

I'd ask for comments and you can leave some if you like, but in the end it'll be up to me whether it stays...

The Dip in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is dip.  And I... am at the start of my spring allergy season.  Read that as:  I went fairly pared down this week because that's pretty much what I have the head for.

It's good practice for me anyway, keeping things simpler.  I don't do graphic often enough.