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.

What do daffodils do?

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is rescue. And these are not-quite-open daffodils. And how am I going to make this fit the theme?

Oh, there's a fit.

It could have been as easy as saying that those of us in northern climates finally feel rescued from winter when the spring flowers start appearing, but the fact is that they haven't actually appeared here yet.

The reason these flowers are in the house at the moment is that it's Daffodil Days for the Canadian Cancer Society. I see that it's also going on in the US, but apparently it started here first. For those unfamiliar with the whole thing (and who haven't followed the link above), the CCS uses the daffodil as a symbol of hope and sells them as a kick-off to its spring fundraiser.

I'm lucky enough to have not been too affected by cancer personally, but that doesn't mean I couldn't be. Those daffodils could represent a pretty important form of rescue in that case.

By the way, the post title comes from the jingle from a CCS ad for Daffodil Days. It... um... has an annoying way of sticking in your head so I'm not going to look for a link. I'm sure it's googleable if you're curious, though.

Very Dead Grape Leaves in pen and ink

I'll try to remember to take this into work and scan it, but the picture gives the basic idea. Erm, such as it is.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is expired. While I might have had thoughts about drawing dead parrots (they just had to use that quote in the e-mail and spoil my fun, didn't they?), any excuse to draw dead leaves is welcome.

I have what's probably a weird fascination with the leaves on my father's grape vine. I take far too many photos of them, both alive and dead, and I've done plenty of doodles of them... only one of which I think I've ever posted here (before this, I mean), for some reason. Maybe I should look them up and see how horrible they are. Anyway, since the grape leaves are thin but heavily veined, they go through some interesting contortions as they wither up in the fall. It's fun to follow the lines. For me, anyway.

And if anyone out there is a grape connoisseur (boy, is that a strange word when you actually sit down and try to spell it) and is wondering what kind of grapes my father is growing, all I can say is that it's some kind that will grow in Alberta. That has to narrow it down quite a lot, because there's not much in the line of grapes that can make it through our lovely winters as far as I know.

Oh, and the odd placement on the page? I'd planned to add some of the background initially, but when I was done with the leaves I kind of liked it this way.