KIND OF A TANGLED MESS,

BUT I LEARNED A LOT

I attempted doing my idea of laying in contour shapes with my "NeoColors." I used yellow for the tulip blooms and green for the leaves. It ended up being kind of frustrating. The yellow was a little light to follow my marks as guides for the next lines. I started getting all mixed up about where I was. I didn't get the tulips placed in the right spots and that led to having a hard time placing what I hadn't drawn yet.. I was about half way through when I became officially lost. Keeping the lines of the stems and leaves all straight was crazy. All that green and all those lines. How in the world do people manage to do those botanical drawings? They definitely have a skill and level of patience that I do not have!

That kind of thought always leads me to wonder if I should be doing art. It seems a "real" artist should at least like to draw. Am I still an artist if I don't like to draw? That question has bothered me since I first took drawing classes in the 1970's. Sometimes I draw and actually come up with some nice little things to incorporate into my fairy cards. Does that count? I guess it should. And if I just keep at it, will I grow to like drawing? Is that possible? I like the idea of it so I'll just keep at it.

Back to the tulips. At the point when I had finally drawn the complete vase of tulips with the "Neo's" I should have scanned the page so that stage could be recorded. But in my frustration I forgot to do that. I was so annoyed at the drawing that I decided to try doing black contour drawing over it. I was determined to get it right. Over my fiasco of a first drawing I carefully drew a second drawing of the flowers in black fine point marker. It actually turned out pretty well. I felt like maybe I was actually improving a bit. You can see the first try in yellow and green. It was interesting to me how off I was on the first drawing attempt. In the drawing above you can actually see that I was much more accurate the second time when I drew with black.

Next post will be of the same drawing except I will have gone in with water and brushed all the water soluble "Neo-Crayon." My hope is the yellow will wash into the blooms and the green into the stems and leaves part. I could toss it. But, you never know. One of my goals in doing this blog is to experiment without expectation.

On with the water wash.