And more "art"

Posted mostly because I'm tired of carrying this scan around on my nerdstick. The newer pages in my --- um, shall I call it a mixed media journal, or just a mucking-around book? -- are getting a little more involved as I get used to making a mess on purpose. I'll try to do some scans of them at some point.

Maybe I'll even take the quotation marks off of the "art" part at some point. That's a fair amount to ask of "some point" though.

Twinflower in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is double, and this is Twinflower (Linnaea borealis). Twinflower is named after Carolus Linneaus, the father of modern taxonomy. I've always found it kind of interesting that one (well, two, since they always come up in pairs) of the tiniest flowers out there is named after one of the biggest names in science history.

Today's doodle is the second version I did for the prompt. Got the idea last night and decided to use a piece of paper that I'd been experimenting with gesso textures on to do a quick watercolour pencil sketch of a twinflower plant. It was pretty loose and abstractish, really. Being the nerd biologist that I am, it didn't have enough plant ID features to make me happy, so this morning at work I did a quick graphite sketch that's more recognisably twinflower. Not perfect, by any means, but I'm happier.

The original version? Um... here:

Yeah. Not quite what the naturalist had in mind.

Ah well, it's all practice.

And excuse the scanner artifact. I'm not sure what's up with our machine here at work at the moment.

And even more "art"

Apparently I really wanted to cover up whatever I wrote underneath this one. It's been a while now; can't quite remember the reason.

Ah well. At least it's... scribble-y? Or something.

And it's got shiny bits. That's always important.

Fun Pack in pen and watercolour pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is breakfast. I'm a little late this week because to be honest I'm not a huge breakfast person. I eat it because I know I should, but I can't say I wake up looking forward to it.

I'm also not a huge cereal person (with the exception of a certain fondness for Count Chocula as a child...), but then I remembered a time when I really considered cereal a treat.

When we went camping every summer my mother used to buy us those Fun Pack cereals. Remember them? You sawed open the perforations on the side to turn the tiny box into a tiny bowl? Which inevitably leaked milk at the corner, of course, but as a kid you never really cared about things like that. Anyway, here's a typical camping breakfast, complete with spoon that bends too easily (and why do I remember them? Because I'm still using the darned things on a daily basis. I inherited them when I went to college, and I've never gotten around to replacing them) and plastic tumbler of apple juice because I didn't like orange juice much.

Didn't like cereal, didn't like orange juice; yeah, I was a weird kid.

Which is probably why I'm a weird adult. It tends to work that way.

And more cat help...

I was going to just take a quick photo of the sketchbook I referenced here so that I could link to it, but apparently Max wasn't done "helping" yet.

He's very subtle, isn't he?

Oh yeah.

Sketchbook in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is diary. I don't keep a diary. I'd bore myself stiff. In fact, I'd probably have done better if the word was dairy.

Anyway, this is a quick sketch of the small red moleskine that lives in my purse since that's as close to diary as my life gets. There's a slight bit of soluble graphite wash mostly just because I was in the mood for a mess. Oh, and there's guest cat feet because Max decided it was time to stop taking pictures and pay attention to him instead.

I had to leave it in. It was too funny. And, I think, the most interesting thing about the picture...

Ah well. For a link to a photo of the actual journal, check here.

Seven With One Blow in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is giant. And this? Well, rather than explain it I'll just direct anyone who hasn't read The Brave Little Tailor to the website here. That'll save me some typing.