Floating Lemons: Bit by Bit Blog

36: Top Snail

Meant to be a simple drawing for the monthly challenge at Botanical Art: any botanical of your choice with a bug or an insect included. Here's my twig with snails attached! Hope it counts.

The scanner has managed to screw this one up some, so it's a bit more blue and overexposed than it should be ... sigh. Ah well, I give up battling, and give in ...

I felt this drawing to be pretty symbolic of my own situation recently: patience and perseverance. Bit by Bit and eventually one reaches one's goal, right? Am not too sure about the top of a dead twig being the best choice but hey, each to his/her own :)

When I returned from my trip to Malaysia, it was to find millions (I am NOT exaggerating) of these teeny white snails all over the terrace and garden. i hate killing just about anything (mosquitoes are fair game I'd say as they're after my blood and they buzz frustratingly all night ...) so it was pretty horrendous walking around hearing crunching sounds from under my shoes eeeeugh. Sigh. They're about as big as half the fingernail on my little finger though they come smaller and slightly larger too ... millions, I promise you. Must go take a photo of it soon as it looks like it's been hailing white snails out there.

P.S.: To those of you who are visiting now, here's a link to a post with some photos of the snails in 'real life': Snails snails snails 

Top Snail Card at Zazzle

35: Guitar

Guitar Card at zazzle

I'm sure that in art, as in life, our minds conveniently create blocks to prevent us from considering the consequences of our actions or decisions ... If we knew how difficult some things would turn out to be, we would never attempt them. As with the above drawing ...

My ex-husband is visiting me at the moment. He's a great guy and we're still good friends, so that isn't as strange as it might sound :) He's also a musician, so of course I saw his guitar and thought, hey, that would make a great drawing .... ack. Conveniently forgot about the strings and bits and pieces, didn't I? Oh yes, and the STRINGS, have I mentioned those? It ended up taking me AGES. And a lot of frustration and cursing, but I persevered, as you can tell.

If any of you out there would like to see me bash my head against the wall (especially any guitar afficionados who are examining my drawing and saying, "Hey, that's not quite right!"), then please, just go ahead and point out the numerous mistakes--all of which I am well aware-- and sit back and enjoy the show :D

Peter (Pete Ross and the Paesanos) has a great voice so take a peek and have a listen, at his sites at MySpace and on Facebook's iLike. Enjoy!

34: Floating Koi

EDM Challenge 166: Draw a Fish

Floating Koi White Card at zazzle

I've been a bit stumped as to what to draw recently ... so went through my photographs and came across some I'd taken of the monstrous carp or koi at my father's place ... they are huge and beautiful, and so I decided to finally put them down on paper. First time I've used only one brand of pencils for a drawing: Caran D'Ache's Luminance 6901. They're gorgeous, though they're soft and need lots of sharpening to retain the fine points I like to work with. Love them!

Once again I had a problem with the background. After my experience with the artichoke I decided not to colour in a background as yet, but have superimposed the fish onto one of my older coloured pencil textured backgrounds just to see how it looks:

Floating Koi Blue Card at zazzle

I kinda like it ... also have to point out the fact that in the photograph there were absolutely no shadows and the water in the pond was so clear that you could see the pebbly ground (which I was NOT about to draw!), so they really DID look as though they were floating on air ...

32: If Elephants Can Fly ... Anything is Possible!

Elephants Can Fly! Card at Zazzle

Am dedicating this one to an old, close and very special friend of mine. He requested a drawing ... and this is not it (I'll get to it eventually!) but I think this will do very well for the meantime. It's to wish him all happiness for his future, as he really does deserve it :)

Wanted to do something simple (and, as it turns out, rather sweet) as I'm still exhausted from running around having to catch up on everything that needs to be done now that I'm back in France. One of these days life will get back to 'normal' I hope. Meanwhile, I'm so enjoying being back here.

I love Malaysia but it's intensity and vividness is sometimes overpowering and I tend to lose myself in the wild tangle of powerful emotions, constant activity and chaotic colour that threaten to separate me from my love of being in control [surely you know that about me by now! :)]

The one thing that I did rediscover on this unexpectedly extra long trip however, was the irreplaceable and precious value of friendship, especially that of friends I have known for literally decades. There is nothing like it -- these are individuals who know me inside out, and, quite remarkably, have stood by  me despite it :) I am honoured by their constant criticism, extremely rare bouts of flattery (!), and twisted senses of humour ... and can quite confidently say, with much pleasure that if we've gone this far together, it's pretty much indestructible. However fragile I may feel the next day ... Thanks guys!

29: My dog Bella, step-by-step

Well, Having drawn Bertha I had to do Bella as well. So here she is, And I've included the step-by-step progress as I did in the previous drawing. Still a lot to learn but I'm pretty pleased with these first attempts at watercolour pencil :) Here's the final drawing with water added and some touching up with the pencils after ...

Here it is with just coloured pencil before the addition of water:

And here's the first pencil sketch:

And finally, the photograph I used as reference. I miss my dogs!

28: My dog Bertha, step-by-step!

I'm back in Malaysia trying to settle paperwork and visa documentation! This is just after spending a whole 5 days lugging all my stuff (how on earth did I manage to accumulate so much ALREADY?!) to the car and back and then a 40 minute drive to the village and 40 minutes back, as I was moving into a new rental home in the village I'm hoping to live in! So it's been hectic to say the least. Have barely had time to think!

But today I finally was able (in between a million zillion phone calls in search of documents, translators, lawyers oh dear) to a bit of drawing. And as I'm missing my dogs, I pulled a photo of one of them out and sat down to play with the watercolour pencils I bought when I got here. And I've managed to scan a few steps of the progress too!

Going backwards, here's the final  drawing:

With water added to the pencils and then a final touch-up with the colours minus water (to darken the shadows mainly) and with a B pencil. I am actually quite pleased with the end result despite the fact that it's not exactly quite the way I thought it would look :)

This was the almost-final pencil stage, before adding water. I found it quite difficult to work with such soft pencils (I'm used to hard, fine sharp ones!) on textured paper even though it was quite finely textured. But I didn't go into too much detail as I wasn't sure if the water would just wash it all away! I also had to alter her paw, as I first drew it a bit too short.

And here's the pencil sketch. I'd already added a bit of colour when I thought of scanning in the progress, but you can still see the beginning rough sketch.

And finally, this is the photo I used as reference! Ok, so I made a few mistakes, but I think I managed to capture her personality and that's what has made me happy with it. Next I'm going to have to do her sister or there's going to be a huge upset in the family :D

Brown Bertha Card at Zazzle! :D