Saskatoon in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is perennial. I'm a little short on time right now, so here's a fifteen-minute sketch of saskatoon, a perennial plant (well, it's a bush, so by definition it's going to be perennial...) that bears fruits that are perennial favourites around here for preserves, syrups, and pie-making. Not quite ripe yet, but when they are I'll be raiding the shrub outside my office window for at least a few handfuls.

If I get around to it I'll try to post something a bit more substantial for the word later.

Baton in acrylic with resist

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is gesture. I grew up singing in choirs and playing in the school band (oboe and tuned percussion, of all things), and I also had my own childrens' choir for about ten years, so I guess that the ultimate in gestures for me is conducting.

I've not actually had much experience with the baton since most choral conducting is done with the bare hand, but I've done baton a little. If I'm to be honest, it felt a lot more regimented and a lot less instinctual than conducting for a choir, but it definitely makes you think more about the importance of each movement.

Since I did most of my choral conducting for kids, it was really more of a full-body thing than conducting with a baton usually is. Kids respond to your energy as well as your beat, so if you want them to truly follow you you'd better be planning to be doing a lot more than just waving your arms around. Conducting a full concert can be pretty exhausting. And since you're generally mouthing the words right along with them, it can also make you just as dry as if you'd sung the whole thing too.

It's tiring, all right, but it can also be pretty exciting to see -- and feel -- a group of singers reacting well as one body. Do I miss it? Yeah, sometimes. Not enough to do anything about it, true, but there are times when I wish I could just step into it for a while again. It was a big part of my life, and every now and then it feels weird to realise how long it's been since I led a rehearsal.

Um...

Yeah. Rehearsals.





Maybe I don't miss rehearsals all that much...

Anyway. Today's doodle is mostly just a result of me having an idea an then deciding I wasn't in the mood to go realistic with it. Oil pastel for resist, painted over with acrylic, and then rubbed down just after the paint stopped being tacky but was still flexible.

Iris in pen and ink

This is some variety or other of Siberian Iris, drawn from a photo. Sad, that, since there are still a couple of them blooming in the garden. It's been absolutely pouring today, though, so photo it was.

I love irises, but this is my first attempt at an iris doodle. Not too bad, I figure, but now that I've tackled one I'm looking forward to getting a bit more practice at it. Maybe even in colour...

Shocking thought, that: a flower in colour. I know. Who'd have even thought it was possible?

Stay in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is stay.

Sit.

Stay.

Good boy...








----------

Because I never got around to posting anything for last week's prompt of remedy, here's a bonus doodle:

Click on the picture if you want to decipher the left-hander writing.

Would I vouch for the remedy? Personally, no. Also, I just have no desire to stick garlic in my ear at this particular time.

I can't help but think that's only reasonable.

'Scuse the added scuzziness from the scanner here at work. It obviously needs a cleaning.

Stork's Bill in pen and ink

Quick specimen sketch tonight, since I have a few more things I have to get to yet...

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is launch. This flower and seed belong to a plant called Stork's Bill or Filaree (Erodium cicutarium), which is native to the Mediterranean, I believe. Here in North America it's considered a weed, and in some places an invasive one. Once you've got it in growing conditions it likes, it can be hard to keep it from spreading.

That's because it has a sneaky way of planting its own seeds.

The coiled awn you see on the seed acts like a spring, and when the seed is ripe it can be launched up to a half-metre away from the parent plant. But that's not the end of things. Humidity acts on the awn, causing it to coil and uncoil, which in turn causes the seed to drill itself into the ground.

Self-planting. Pretty darned cool.

For a pretty darned cool time-lapse photo of the awl's coiling action, scroll down a bit on this page. And for anyone in Canada who hasn't ever listened to Quirks and Quarks, the radio show the report on the page was taken from... Seriously? You've missed some good popular science then, folks.

African Violet in acrylic

Hey, it's almost even a painting.

Ok, so it is a painting.

I still think I have the brush skills of a five-year-old, but I can now officially say that I've completed two canvasses in my lifetime.

What an achievement...

Part of my problem with painting (besides the fact that I don't know how to paint) is that I don't have much patience when it comes to letting layers dry. When a person doodles (or this person, at least) it means no more than an hour's worth of deciding what to do. Paint? Sheesh. That takes comparatively forever.

That's hard on those of us who don't have attention spans, you know.






Sorry. What was I saying?

The flash on my point-and-shoot got rid of a bit of the detail, but this photo is still enough to give the gist, I suppose.

Apple Blossom and Buds in pen and ink

Bit of a line study today. I tried to keep it simple and avoid any hatching or other shading, but I just couldn't avoid adding a few veins to the leaves. Leaf veins are just too much fun. Or at least they are to my branching-obsessed brain.

If you'd told me a few years back that I'd be free-handing anything in pen and ink without pencilling in first (and in a book without tear-out sheets, no less), I would have thought you were insane. I was way too eraser dependent, and way too lacking in confidence to even consider making a line that might possibly not make me happy.

I used to throw out an awful lot of stuff. Nearly finished stuff, too, if I'd mucked it up towards the end. I don't do that so much now, I'm happy to say.

Working in sketchbooks has been good for me, I think. It's making me a little more spontaneous in my lines (although I'd like to get a little more quick and sketchy yet. I'm still too controlled for my liking). More importantly, it's slooowly giving me the ability to look back on doodles that are less than perfect -- sometimes much less than perfect -- without cringing and wanting to toss the entire book in the bin.

Well, mostly. I still have my days. It's a start, anyway.

This was done from a photo I took a couple of weeks ago, partly because I felt like drawing an apple blossom even though they're done for the season, and partly because the mosquitoes are pretty trying at the moment. I may be getting more confident in my lines, but constant swatting certainly wouldn't help them any...