Snowshoe art

Just quickly because I have work to do, but here's proof that art is still happening, even if it doesn't make it to the blog.

Well, doodles are still happening, anyway.

Canola in watercolour

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is summer. And this is, quite honestly, a little fifteen-minute sketch done in front of the television last night. Most of those fifteen minutes were spent watching the paint dry...

Yeah, I know. Such an artist, me.

Anyway, I live in a part of Alberta where a lot of canola is grown, so summer around here usually means bright yellow fields contrasted with a vivid blue sky (and no, I'm not being poetic. The sky on a hot day is strikingly blue) and the greens of poplars and spruce. It's about as pretty as agriculture can get (in a good way, I mean). Around here, anyway.

The one thing missing from my imaginary field is a pump jack. I wasn't in the mood for that particular reality of life in Alberta. Oh, and if you've never seen an actual canola field, this picture is a pretty good representation. Our area's a big more rolling-hilly than that, though.

On a medium note, I'm finding that Sakura's Koi watercolour pans read a bit better on my cheap scanner than my Cotmans. Do I like the paint itself better? Hey, I have the brush skills of a five-year-old. You could probably substitute in the Reeves school set I had in grade three and I wouldn't notice. Ok, I would... but I'm really not a very good judge when it comes to paint of any sort.

Stripped Down in tinted charcoal

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is farewell.

Goodbye, winter gear. Too bad, so sad. Don't come out again until next November.



Of course, since this is Alberta it'll probably be out again next week.

Sigh.

Sunflower Scaffold in tinted charcoal and Derwent Metallics

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is train.

I like to train morning glories up my sunflowers. I like the way it looks, and since I'm container-gardening on a balcony the two-for-one in the same space is a nice bonus.

Now, if only spring would make a slight thought about appearing...

Kind of just a mixed media mess...

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is snow.

I hate snow.

No, really hate it.

I grew up with snow, I still live with (I was going to say in rather than with, but then you'd wonder if I lived in an igloo) snow, and I hate snow. I hate cleaning off my car after it's been snowing, I hate driving in snow, and the only reason I don't hate shovelling snow is that I live in an apartment building so I rarely have to worry about taking care of walkways. And as for white Christmases? I think that they lose their charm once you're past childhood. One of the best Christmases I've ever had, personally, was one we spent in Hawaii.

With no snow.

Not a fan of snow, did I mention?

So naturally a prompt like snow wasn't going to bring out warm fuzzy feelings in Yours Doodlingly. What it did bring out was my mess of a mixed media journal (I so want to put journal in quotes. This book is nothing like a journal. More like a disaster). What you're seeing, then, done in front of the television last night, is cut-paper snowflakes covered in gesso and a blue watercolour wash, traced in watercolour brush pen, and... um, I guess you could say accented with silver and purple spider writer ink.

Yep.

I guess snow gives me the blues...

Hurry up... in art stix

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is hurry! Exclamation point included, even.

I garden. I garden in a small way since I live in an apartment, but container gardens still count as gardens. I grew up in a gardening family. There was gardening on both sides, but I suppose that my biggest gardening influence was my maternal grandmother (although I think I probably owe my preference for slightly wild-looking cottage-style gardens to my English paternal grandmother). Grandma kept all her own seed, and started what seemed like hundreds of flats of bedding-out plants every year. They were all kept in a spare bedroom and a covered-in but unheated porch that provided almost perfect starting conditions for the seedlings.

I helped out, and I learned.

Funny thing, but what I remember most about Grandma's bedding flats were the thousands of French Marigolds (as opposed to the Pot Marigolds that I know better as Calendula), and the tomatoes. The marigolds because there were always so many of them and in so many different shapes, and the tomatoes... well, to this day I really dislike the smell of tomato plants. I'm not all that fond of raw tomatoes either, come to it.

These days I don't save seed, and I don't start flats. I've tried to in the past (late winter brings on a pretty strong I've-got-to-plant-something-soon urge with me. I think it's hereditary), but the conditions in the apartment just aren't right and I'm not willing to invest in grow lights and the rest. Erm, especially since it'd be in a one-room apartment that already has too many houseplants in it, but that's another story. Anyway. I don't start flats, but I did seed my planters this year instead of buying bedding plants. I'll be doing that for the next few years, probably, since I came into a lot of free seed that'll be usable for a long time as long as I've stored it right. No point in it going to waste.

But.

Seeding a planter is sooo frustrating when all you want is to have nice, green, growing things that will hopefully be nice, green, flowering things all season (or nice, green, vegetable-making things. They're there, too). Our season is short enough as it is without waiting for seeds to sprout. I seeded fairly early since my balcony's sheltered, but still. Grow, dammit. I want my plants...

Yeah, I can be a bit on the impatient side sometimes. Maybe not enough to get the magnifying glass out to check the progress of the latest thing to break through the soil, but it's close.

Hurry up, already, you plants.

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Sorry for the lack of posting lately. The wrist is starting to behave again as long as I don't overdo it, so things might get a little more regular here again. It may even end up to be a two-post day today, since I'm going to try to make time to doodle for Drawing Day. I encourage everyone else to, too.

Watch this space... we'll see what I can manage.

Spring Return in watercolour and art stix

I meant this for last week's Illustration Friday prompt of return, but somehow I never got back to it in time...

Ba-dum-bump.

Yeah, even I'll admit that it was a cheesy line.

Anyway, this is an ATC on vellum bristol. Interested? Leave a comment or drop me a note at the e-mail address on the sidebar.



Feel free to do either even if you're not interested, of course...

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.

Winter Craving in soft pastels

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is craving. I haven't had the pastels out for a very (VERY) long time, so I figured it was an excuse to do something a little different from my usual line drawings. This quick sketch (I know, I know. Technically it's a pastel painting but I'm so much not a painter that I cringe whenever I try to call it that) is meant to show what I generally spend most of each winter craving: something that's not winter.

I really don't like winter.

It'd be great if wishing could make the snow start to decay and cause instant flowers to spring up, but since that's never going to happen it's just going to have to remain a craving.

Click on the photo for a larger version. You know, if you want to.

The Path

Nine o'clock and darkness:
Short-cutting through pasture
To avoid the ice of early snow.
Knife-edge air slices skin
And shatters with a dead grass hiss
As I pass in shadow.
It would be easy to look down,
Leery of a fall reflected
In distant lamps
And headlights;
But I've decided to have stars in my world...
And, eyes uplifted,
Put faith only in the sky
To guide me home.

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In real life this would be a good way to sprain an ankle.

In a poem?

Well, I think I'll just say you should judge for yourself where I was headed with this.

Peas Please

If I could only eat one vegetable for the rest of my life
I think it would be peas
But not your everyday out-of-the-freezer-bag peas
Oh no
I'm talking fighting your way through too-closely packed rows of twined-up vines
Listening to those swollen pods rattle
And the squeeeak as you nip them off with green-stained thumb and finger
To add them to their brothers in the basket
(Although many mysteriously find their way to the mouth instead)
And then the POP and RIIIP of those cocoons
As they relinquish their close-guarded treasures
Green globes cascading into Tupperware
And into laps when attention wavers
All leading up to that proud presentation at the dinner table:
Our heroes -- slightly chilled of course
Having never known the sacrilege of the cooking pot
Ready to explode stored sunshine with every bite...
Ah, I think that I shall never see
A veggie lovely as a pea

Unless you count those firm, crisp new carrots there
Mmm... carrots...

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The was written a few years ago in a moment of pure silliness. I think, though, that it still has a little bit of something to say about the transience of satisfaction.

Either that, or it's a hint at the absolute relief that finally having fresh veggies again can give a person who lives in a country with a fairly short growing season...

Seeing

Poplar leaf miners
left networks of tunnels here
Small city in green

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Surprise! I can, on occasion, write short poems too.

Bet you never would have guessed.

Blue

Too hot this time to think about thinking
so I float along in the hammock
hands shading eyes
watching poplar leaves shimmer in the sun
like shards of Tiffany glass
wrapped up in the silken blue of a
perfect Alberta summer sky

My uncle
who has lived too long away
tells me we live in Big Sky Country
and take it for granted, the blue
that goes on until forever on these days
when the air hardly moves
and even the farthest horizon is highlighted
across blonde canola blooms

I didn't know myself
until I found me enclosed for a time
in the grey of an artificial jungle
(and saw my eyes turn concrete to match)
how much of what I am
depends on days

of still, hot summers
scattered with green
and yellow
and perfect, open skies
touching endless fields
with neverending blue

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A bit early to post a summer poem, I suppose, but yesterday's temperature put me in the mood.

This one is supposed to be rambling and lazy, so the near lack of punctuation is on purpose. Just picture swinging in the hammock, enjoying a warm day and a clear blue sky.

The open, blue sky is something about Alberta that I'd miss terribly if I ever moved. I've visited other places, obviously, and it's amazing how much the lack of a good sky can close a person in. I'd swear, it's almost a claustrophobic world for those of you who don't get the chance to really enjoy your sky.