ink on paper
Isn't this fun? I haven't just sat and drawn in ages. I always did love drawing plants, too; when I was a kid I remember we once received an assignment in art class to design seed packets. I loved it so much that - typical! - I think I must have made a dozen of the things over the weekend. The small scale, the beauty of the plants, the functional THING that resulted ... it was a perfect assignment for me.
So this week, I set out to make something super colorful, a celebration of all the fun colors of things I'm growing in my garden this year. Each year, I find more plants I want to try, new-to-me heirlooms in special color variations, scents, flavorful yields, this sort of thing. Each year, the garden is a place to try to incorporate more new things, more texture, more color! As much as I admire a restrained palette, I think it's probably time to admit that I'll never be able to commit to just one color palette, and my gardens will probably always be a wild riot of every bold color I can find. To wit, this year I am growing two kinds of green beans, and two kinds of yellow beans, one bean with a hot-pink-and-white streaked pod. FUN! I have purple radishes and white radishes and French breakfast radishes (red with white tips). I started painted lady sweet peas from seed (with a striated red-and-white flower, and a strong perfume), I am growing tomatoes in white, red, orange, yellow, green, indigo and blackish purple. There are orange snapdragons and blue salvia and purple poppies and multi-colored stocks, pink nasturtiums and orange and red trailing nasturtiums, and new red crocosmia bulbs from my neighbour (who decided to thin her patch). And that's just the beginning. I have tons of hollyhocks, english daisies, and other annuals and perennials starting from seed on the deck. Flowers!! Everywhere!!
So ... what happened to this card? Well, I started with pencil sketches that I turned into simple ink sketches ... and then I realized I liked it so much that I thought I'd just leave it this way. There. It's just a whisper, a promise of summer - the bare outlines (like those seedlings on my deck), waiting to be filled in (though on this glorious 80-degrees-and-sunny spring day in Seattle, it's hard to believe it isn't August already!).
So this week, I set out to make something super colorful, a celebration of all the fun colors of things I'm growing in my garden this year. Each year, I find more plants I want to try, new-to-me heirlooms in special color variations, scents, flavorful yields, this sort of thing. Each year, the garden is a place to try to incorporate more new things, more texture, more color! As much as I admire a restrained palette, I think it's probably time to admit that I'll never be able to commit to just one color palette, and my gardens will probably always be a wild riot of every bold color I can find. To wit, this year I am growing two kinds of green beans, and two kinds of yellow beans, one bean with a hot-pink-and-white streaked pod. FUN! I have purple radishes and white radishes and French breakfast radishes (red with white tips). I started painted lady sweet peas from seed (with a striated red-and-white flower, and a strong perfume), I am growing tomatoes in white, red, orange, yellow, green, indigo and blackish purple. There are orange snapdragons and blue salvia and purple poppies and multi-colored stocks, pink nasturtiums and orange and red trailing nasturtiums, and new red crocosmia bulbs from my neighbour (who decided to thin her patch). And that's just the beginning. I have tons of hollyhocks, english daisies, and other annuals and perennials starting from seed on the deck. Flowers!! Everywhere!!
So ... what happened to this card? Well, I started with pencil sketches that I turned into simple ink sketches ... and then I realized I liked it so much that I thought I'd just leave it this way. There. It's just a whisper, a promise of summer - the bare outlines (like those seedlings on my deck), waiting to be filled in (though on this glorious 80-degrees-and-sunny spring day in Seattle, it's hard to believe it isn't August already!).
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