365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Botanical Art
Day 97: My talent for art is feeble at best, although I'm learning how to handle coloured pencils thanks to a Christmas gift of Johanna Basford's "Enchanted Forest" colouring book. As I've experimented with shading and blending, it has occurred to me that any naturalist worth the name should at least dabble at illustrating. Here you see my first effort, catkins plucked from Harry Lauder, the contorted filbert in my yard. I made a faint outline of my subject with a standard lead pencil and then began applying colour. Unfortunately, I failed to center the drawing on the page (laziness on my part...I should have erased it and started over), and I find the colour saturation to be lacking (best I could manage with these pencils), but as a first attempt, I'm not too disappointed.
Labels:
art,
botanical art,
coloured pencils,
contorted filbert,
drawing,
Harry Lauder,
sketch
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