Spring Forward in pen & ink and inktense

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is forward.

It just occurred to me... is "spring forward, fall back" only a North American thing for remembering what to do with the clocks in regards to daylight savings? If so, this won't make sense to a few people. Sorry about that.

My flowers and leaves are pretty much out of fiction today and the scanner has (as usual) decided that things are supposed to be yellower than I meant them to be, but that's ok with me.

Back in my lettering days I would have taken far more time setting things out (shame on me -- not even a ruler at hand this time). Considering that I was mostly just doodling this afternoon, though, I don't think it turned out too badly overall.

And still more... well, you probably know at this point.

Today we're (me 'n' alllll the voices) featuring Red-osier Dogwood, which I learned as Cornus stolonifera but which is now C. sericea because plant taxonomy is apparently no fun if you're not confusing someone.

Or maybe that's just me.



Yeah, that's right. You heard me. I'm no fun if I'm not confusing someone.

And more work stuff...

Today? Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis). Tomorrow? Well, I suppose you'll see.

Hey, look. It's work stuff

Finally getting some more work done on a much-delayed berry bush display. This particular specimen is Buffaloberry (Shepherdia canadensis).

Slightly dangerous of me to post link photos of the actual plant that I was attempting, maybe, but what the heck. You may as well have at least some reference, right?

Silly things to do when you're shut in

Shut-in by the weather, in my case. Last week? Nasty cold. So what does a person do with a week where it's not a great idea to be outside? Well, in my case some sketching and other things for work (I'll post a couple of the sketches after this, but I'm going to schedule them. No sense in having everything appear at once, after all).

Oh, and playing around with masking fluid.

You know what? Masking fluid's kind of fun.

I'm not going to bother posting any of my other "creations" since they're so obviously just me playing, but still. Masking fluid's kind of fun all right.

I'm so easily amused...

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On a totally different note, I have a brand new, still-blank pack of ATCs in my possession at the moment. Suggestions on what to do with them? They're kind of hard to make paper airplanes out of...

Pear Flower in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is prepare. And this, done very quickly out of necessity because I'm just on a break here at work, is a pear flower and buds.

It's pre-pear.





Yeah... I know. Sorry about that. I couldn't think of anything else off the top of my head.

Flown in carbon pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is grounded. And here? An assortment of things that used to fly, but won't be flying anymore as far as I can tell.

The feather I hope was moulted rather than leftover from some animal's meal, although... circle of life and all of that, right? Actually, as a zoologist I have to admit that I'm not at all squicked out by food chains. They're more than a little bit necessary, after all.

The plant fruits are both wind-dispersed, and have a couple of different strategies for staying in the air as long as possible. Everyone's familiar with the parachute-bearing fruits of the dandelion, I know, although I didn't know that the fruits themselves are called cypselae rather than achenes (kind of a nerd point there, but without us nerds the world would be a much duller place. No, really. It would. Nerd power!). The other fruit is an achene, and it's the samara or key of the Manitoba Maple or Box Elder. We always called them helicopters when I was a kid, because they stay in the air by spinning as they fall. I have kind of a weird little fascination with these things, I guess, judging from how many of them I've drawn over the years.

Last but not least, I like to think that my little spiderling has just finished the one and only flight of its life. In order to spread out -- and keep from eating each other -- the spiderlings of many species will send out a long filament of silk once they're hatched, and "balloon" to another place when the wind catches the silk.

Everything here was built to be aloft (well, maybe not the spider) but has hit the dirt for the last time. Sounds pretty grounded to me.

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Incidentally, as an almost-fanatical sharpener -- to the point where I hardly used to be able to start any sort of drawing project until ALL of the pencils in the kit were sharpened even if I wasn't going to use them -- I'm stupidly proud to say that I didn't sharpen my pencil one single time while I was doing this. Not even when I got to the dandelion seed. Small steps count, you know.

Yep. More work stuff.

I have nothing to say about this one except that I now loathe circles.

At lest temporarily.

Yet more work stuff

I bet you're all just dying to know what I'll be drawing next, aren't you?

Hint: it's something to do with Wood Frogs.



Um, yeah.