Going Smaller, With Lighter and Brighter Colours

I really caught the gelli printing bug last week.  In this iteration, I wanted to use some lighter and brighter colours.  I was also experimenting with stencils and masks.

Botanical Gelli Prints

Last week I experimented with some larger botanical gelli prints.  These might become book covers, and they might have a bit of stamping or writing added.  Not sure yet.  Ideas are still "gelling", pardon the pun.  Here's a few more:

Colouring Books Are All the Rage

Pan Pastel

Colouring books have been gaining popularity with adults, who want to access the calm that comes from brushing colour across a page.  I decided to create my own pages from the stacks of calligraphy practice sheets that I couldn't bear to throw away.

Pencil Crayon

Botanical Gelli Prints

Fabriano Sketchbook 8.5" x 11"

I've been experimenting with botanical prints made with my Gelli Plates lately.  Here I've added them to a journal page.  

Ash and elm trees are very common in Vancouver, although they are not native.  I think that I will focus on learning about the plant families that I commonly see here for now.

Using the Right Tool

Canson Art Book, 9" x 12"

Watercolor with a flat brush

Calligraphers use broad edge pens to produce wonderful "thicks and thins" in writing, taking advantage of the fact that the pen makes a broad stroke when moving down, and a thin stroke when moving up.   (Joanne Sharpe, for example, says "let the pen tool do the work for you", in her course "Letter Love".)  Not surprisingly, calligraphers also use flat wash brushes in ingenious ways with watercolor, not only to write in the same way, but also to draw.  

In the meeting last week at the Westcoast Calligraphy Society, a talented artist taught us how to use a flat brush and watercolor to make Christmas cards.  It wasn't the first time that I have learned some of these strokes, but the application to a pine cone struck me as particularly ingenious.  Not too long ago, I spent 1/2 an hour meticulously drawing a pine cone in pen.  These took 5 minutes! 

Learning 100 Plant Families?

Fabriano Sketchbook

8.5" x 11"

Pencil Crayon

You will see on this journal page that I am wrestling with the challenge of learning all 100 Plant Families.  Doubting my ability to stick with it.  Now that I've documented (still not quite internalized) the 7 that account for 45,000 species, do I want to do the rest?  Am I that interested?  If so, how might I proceed?

Those are the questions I've been wrestling with.  I think I'm homing in on an answer.  Stay tuned....

Field Work

Yesterday I was out learning about ash trees.  The photos I took are so much better than any art I could make LOL.  Nature is the ultimate artist!