Botanicals And A Friend

Day 251: Emboldened by my modest success at drawing recognizable bird species, I have been working on botanicals most recently, trying to be as scientifically accurate as coloured pencils will allow. I've also done a few with graphite pencil, and while I feel that the medium allows me to capture more detail, the temptation to add colour is strong. That said, it's not always about science. The gooseberries (center left) were a bit of whimsy, sketched while sitting in a lawn chair in the Berry Pen. The California poppy (top right) is even more whimsical, and my first real attempt at using watercolours instead of watercolour pencils. I resisted the impulse to outline the plant in ink, a break from my usual style. Top left, you see Buckhorn (Plantago lanceolata), a weed everyone recognizes but can't name. Like the Columbine ("Black Barlow," lower left) and the Honeysuckle (Lonicera), it was a specimen plucked from my yard. And then of course we have Stemonitis middle right. It is a slime mold...not a plant, not an animal, not a fungus, so technically not belonging in this collection at all, but it was the very first Stemonitis I've found and therefore merited a degree of artistic immortality. I mean, what's not to like about slime molds?