pastels, mostly

just in case you guys were wondering what the heck i've been doing lately, here is an update. a lot can happen in three months - sorry about that. i am the worst blogger some days.

what i want to get for my next tattoo...mmmmmm yes

a highly unrealistic caricature of a man who mildly resembles TheBoy if you squint real hard.

an abstracted guitar of sorts. unfinished. 

zentangles! it's like doodling, but a little more sophisticated.

Honduras water color. i'm in the process of making some cards with these on the front. should be good.

chalk pastel sunflower. i turned out liking this a lot more than i originally planned.

the finished project

Well, school has been out since Thursday, but here is my final project all finished. 

botanical illustrations are not my forte

I found it a little funny that a couple days ago I stumbled across a blog in the "Blogs of Note" that linked me to the author's gallery website. Take a look at her floral prints, they are beautifully rendered. The reason that this is slightly humorous to me because this week in my watercolor class we are focusing on plants - mainly close ups of different kinds.

Yesterday we worked from flowers in the arboretum, and there were those beautiful western irises we all love so dearly. Today Mr. Teacher Man told us to go outside and pick a flower that we would like to paint. There is a beautiful bleeding heart plant outside the building that I knew is the one I wanted to paint because it looks like this:

I have grown up being told not to pick the flowers. If everybody just wanted to take 'one flower' then there would be no flowers at all! So you better just leave those alone Natalie Dawn, lest you be in major trouble. So, it kind of hurt my soul a little to break off a stem of these pretty flowers to paint. And it hurt even worse when after I was done the pretty little pink blooms got tossed in the trash can.

(Sorry for the poor quality photo. The lighting in our classroom is really not that great and my camera was just my cell phone. It didn't really want to cooperate because it was up too late last night and didn't sleep very well at all. It always gets grumpy when that happens...)

But you can see what we were trying to do. Nothing like Miss Margarethe can do, but it's really my beginning attempt at this type of painting. The idea is to be very detailed, and well really, that's just not my strong suit. Have you seen my artwork? Detailed it is not!

On the flip side, I think I have a new favorite flower - calla lilies, poppies, and now bleeding hearts. I bet that would make a pretty bouquet though, don't you think?

i didn't promise you a rose garden

I love flowers. There are so many different colors, shapes, sizes and smells of flowers that I don't believe you could ever be bored of them. I love vibrantly colored flowers the best, and there is a garden on A street that is full of bright reds and yellows and pinks that I simply cannot get enough of! I would love to have a garden that colorful, but I think my distaste for weeding overpowers my appreciation of fresh flowers, so I'm more inclined to just relish in your flowers than try to grow my own.

These flowers are Western Irises, and they are beautiful. These particular blossoms live in the Arboretum on campus, which, coincidentally, is also where we ended up painting today. I have not ventured into the Arboretum except for once last September with my new roommates in the dark. Therefore, I had no idea the wonders to behold when walking around the luscious green pathways. Did you know there are ponds down there? Ponds! With turtles! And frogs!

There are lilac bushes bigger than China and huge willow trees that look like they could swallow you whole.

We walked and walked and walked until we came out on the other side next to a big red barn. I love barns, especially big red ones. And this barn was behind a big garden with Western Irises, Bearded Irises (of every freakin' color you can think of!), Daffodils, more flowers that I can't remember the names of, different types of grasses and lovely, lovely trees.

Unfortunately the weather felt like being really uncooperative (how rude!) and rained for a majority of the time we were down there. I don't know if you realize just how difficult that makes trying to paint with watercolors...since it's water falling from the sky onto your paper and messing up your colors. Plus, your paper can't really ever dry if it's being constantly sprinkled on. My first paintings of the Bearded Irises turned into splashes of color instead of beautiful flowers.

But then around 3:30 the rain began to lighten up, and I moved on from the beards to the westerns. The gorgeous purple flowers were practically just begging to be painted, so I set up shop in order to record their loveliness.