Trees in Parking Lots while Waiting for Appointments: Scribble Tree in Oley Valley

Waiting for the Wednesday afternoon botany walk to start, I barely had enough time to scribble a bit of a large tree that stood in the distance.

This is my Jill Bliss Nature Journal that has smooth paper that works well with pens. I'm using G2 Pilot Gel pens. This journal really does not like water at all.

Absolutely love to scribble, scribble. 

This tree may or may not ever be done, 

but let's call it Tree #131!

Car Art: Horse Sketches

Using my lap as a desk during the long car ride to D.C.  That's a copy of Ken Hultgren's The Art of Animal Drawing - Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature first published in 1951.  

I promised April a horse picture back in the spring, but just now doing some warm up sketches.

My husband really frowns on me painting in a moving vehicle that has white leather seats, so I used three colored pencils: a blue, a purple, and an orangy-red.  

First I sketched the horse with the blue. Then I sketched it over again trying to find the mistakes and correct them. 

Orange pencil was last, still trying out lines and shapes. Making this one look balanced was hard. Used some drop lines to help. The drop lines should be straight - oh, well. Please ignore all of the extra legs.

More extra legs. This was done on the way home, and I was tired.

Eyes started to close. Didn't finish this one, but I like the trot!

This book is an oldie but a goodie. It has lots of illustrations and few words. It helps you understand the underlying construction of an animal so you can depict it correctly in motion. If you look at it on Amazon, you can see inside the book to check it out.

I "heart" Tomato

Art and Oatmeal with Peaches and a Tomato, Redux.

Scroll and read or click on the video!

(In case you haven't seen "Tomatoes Gone Bad" click here.)

It all started when I picked this heart shaped tomato from the bucket. We don't have a vegetable garden. We have a bucket with a tomato plant in it. Ya'd think with 9 acres of land, we would find somewhere to plant a tomato. 

Then at breakfast I decided that I needed to draw the wonderful heart shaped tomato. 

The last time I drew a tomato on a plate, the plate was wonky. Here I am trying to figure out the ellipse of the plate by drawing it through the tomato.  Note: the plate is upside down.

Oatmeal finished and I have a watercolor of a heart-shaped tomato on an upside down plate. But hey, there's still some orange juice left and the red on the page is not as tomato-y as I would like it...

So I grabbed some Tombow watercolor markers and got jiggy with them.

Hmmm, lost the whites. The plate is wonky. Colors running everywhere. Life is good. And so is lunch.

So at lunch, I started again. This time I did not add Sharpie to the drawing right away which is what I did at breakfast.

I used watercolors and tried to save the whites for highlights. Then I picked up the Sharpie because nothings finished until I've made some marks with a pen.

I added some journaling about my process.

And called it done.

Did you see the Tomatoes Gone Bad movie?

Click below!

Tomatoes Gone Bad: The Movie

More Matoes:

And one tiny green one:

The Sunflower that Survived...

What's on my mind? 

This is the Sunflower that was eaten by deer back in June.

She looked like this:

There was nothing left but a bare stalk!

At that time I thought to pull it up, but when I tugged on her, she seemed to tug back as if to say, "No. Leave me here. I can do this." 

So I let her be. 

And slowly she came back to life. First the leaves and then the flower buds.

You can see where the original leaves were bitten off. 

 Where the single stalk becomes two, is where the top of the plant was eaten.

After all of that, the Sunflower is now being eaten by Japanese Beetles. 

She's a survivor! 

She's also a "volunteer" that planted herself in the flowerpot under the bird feeder. You have to love that!

There is a miracle in every seed. 

Monarda: 

Tiger Lily:

Zoom In, Zoom Out: Backyard Scots Pine

Voila!

The "Zoom In, Zoom Out" page featuring one of the backyard Scots Pines.

Started the page here:

Added the pine cone during breakfast here:

Sat outside and added the branch and close-up of the needles today.

Tomatoes gone bad...

Mug Shots May Not Be My Cup-of-Tea...

Egads! This is suppose to be a picture of the mug that was a gift from the Millersville Literacy Institute students. I'm afraid I did not do it justice. The actual mug is really quite nice.

 Maybe it's hot chocolate? I started with regular watercolors and added some opaque ones as well. Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Journal.

Liz Steel receives china tea cups as gifts. She sure does make tea cups look stunning. And she's only painted about 600 pictures of them for practice! Check out her website:  http://www.lizsteel.com/cuppa-tea-time-a-teacup-step-by-step/  

I get mugs. I'm sure I'm more of a mug person anyway. I'd probably break the china. Can a mug look elegant in its own way? I guess I'll have to paint 599 more to find out...

Tree #130/10,000

Tree #130 of 10,000

Backyard pine tree sketched with watercolor pencils. (Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media journal)

On 10,000 things:

Oneness

天地同根      Heaven and earth and I are of the same root,

萬物一體      The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.

Zen Master Sêng-chao/Sõjõ (僧肇 384-414)

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/sayings.htm

Art and Oatmeal with Peaches and Pinecones

Working on a "Zoom In, Zoom Out" page about a pine tree in my back yard. 

Maybe I need a bigger breakfast table?

Trying to make the pine cone life-size.

Switched out the black Zig Writer for the brown one to finish the cone after the watercolors dried.

The pine tree was painted with watercolor pencils. I'll probably add a close-up of a bit of branch to the page.

Tree bits and branches: