Country Garden Stitchery

It has been awhile since I've participated with Illustration Friday. I've been drawing plenty, just not posting. I took a great life drawing class and learned so much, but now that it is over I find myself with more time. Thinking of a class for fall, but haven't decided yet. It is really neat how classes can change perspective and lead into new directions, very healthy. Happy Memorial Day to all and enjoy the long weekend.

I love wizards and wanted to paint one for this topic. He is conjuring up some gifts for a birthday in this painting. Lots of fun, maybe will try a dragon next time. I loved the movie "Pete's Dragon" when I was a kid - i like dragons and would love to visit Maine.

Here are some plain flowers I tried my new gouache set on. I've only played with watercolor until now and really like the gouache, although have to remember not so much water... i like to use lots of water in my watercolor paintings! Very excited to start a painting class tomorrow. Will be painting models and trying my hand at acrylic. Branching out a little... Have a good week!

This is one of my favorite things, to stitch. I turn a lot of my paintings and drawings into cross stitch designs - of flowers - but i'm sure you guess that already! I also admire quilting and sewing of any sort. Takes such talent and patience. My grandmother has given my family many beautiful quilts we display in our home and use all the time. Love their color and cozy feeling they give our home. Have a great weekend.

Took me a bit to think of something for this week's topic, but these roses seemed to be open 100% so I chose them. Lots of 10% color too, usually I like pastels. Venturing into new things maybe...

This topic brought lots of things to mind, first I remembered seeing a film of people flying off a huge cliff skydiving - they were thrill seekers. My son loved watching it, hope he never tries it... anyway I wanted something more gentle so I chose flower petals leaving the flower and soaring off into the wind. Happy New Year!

I finally am caught up with Christmas things so I decided to catch up on IF topics too. I knew what I wanted to draw and paint, but had a hard time getting a few minutes. These were fun topics and I loved to play with the color on them. With "horizon" I wanted the feeling to be that you never know what is coming next, especially since the new year is upon us! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I would love to have an antique scale and a little room in a potting shed for making potpourri with dried flower petals from my garden each year. Tried to depict this in my illustration this week. Can't wait to see all the other scale illustrations... Happy Weekend!

I loved this topic and thought immediately of fancy hats worn to a tea party. Our family has tea parties now and then and it is fun to dress up and have tea. I also thought of the RED hats that are so popular now, but decided to stick with pinks and purples - my favorite colors. Enjoy the autumn weekend.

These two little kids remind me of my own when they were young and loved to trick or treat. However, we never did see any really scary houses that we had to think twice about approaching so I thought I would draw some. Happy Halloween~

Thinking of how kids like to measure how much they've grown. A tall sunflower would be great to measure up against, especially if there is a sunflower house close by. I've always wanted to grow a sunflower house. Sounds like a great place to escape to.

I had to think all day about this illustration, didn't come easy to me. Until...I was working on another project and the concept of light and dark extremes came to me. And since I love to draw and paint flowers, this is what I came up with.

I wanted to depict the study of the rose from the closed bud to its fullest "open" point with this week's topic. I think it is fun to do studies of flowers in their different stages. The rose is one of the flowers that has quite a long growing phase from the time the bud appears to the time the rose is at its fullest. Have fun with the contest for this week's entry, I did.

I immediately thought of clusters of blue flowers in many different shades of blue. Mixing the different shades in watercolor, however, presented another challenge. I found myself coming up with lots of teal shades. I'll have to work on mixing the blues. Happy weekend all.

I wanted to draw something to correlate with the season and I thought about a lady trying to juggle all of her equipment back so she doesn't have to make another trip, ever feel that way? I felt like using red too, such a strong color and not in my usual palette, so apples came to mind. Have a good weekend. Nice and cool here in Nevada.

I had been thinking about weddings last week so I thought it ironic that would be the topic this week. I was thinking about my own wedding and if I knew myself as I do now when I got married I would have had a completely different wedding. I would have wanted a very simple wedding outdoors in nature near an old wise tree dressed in simple clothes with just a few special people attending and hopefully lots of birds and other creatures hiding, but watching.

The topic momentum challenged me. I thought of the time of year and nature. I have lived in the desert most of my life and spend a lot of time outside exploring. The wind blows regularly and we see many tumbleweeds rolling their way across the desert. They are very light and prickly and tend to float in the wind. Sometimes when there is a strong windstorm at night they will all be piled up next to a fence all stuck together, piled high like a pyramid.