A time for reading, writing, drawing and conversation. Even the residents at the bottom of the garden were taking shelter wherever they could.
I was checking in on Olivia's blog to see what she'd been up to lately. There was a delightful watercolour of a thoughtful fairy, which inspired me to draw a fairy.
OliviaArtbox
I always take a bag full of art materials on these sojourns and spread them out all over the dining table when we arrive. I'm usually disappointed by the amount of creation I've completed by the end of the week. This time I just took a large and a small sketchbook and my ancient Derwent Studio coloured pencils.
It's been ages since I last used coloured pencils but I really enjoyed pfaffing around with them. Layering the colours and creating different textures. You can exercise a lot of control with pencils. Anything from soft and delicate grainy hints to deep saturated glossy colour. It's amazing how limitations and restrictions can increase your creativity.
It was the first drawing of the week and it was a bit weak.
Let Olivia do Olivia picters and Awa Rich do Awa Rich picters Awa Rich!
Agreed, but it got my hand movong and I made marks on paper. I could see there was potential, not just in the texture of the pencil marks but the subject too. Vegetation, Fungi and anything sheltering beneath, raindrops (on noses and whispering kittens, snowcakes in freezers and fingers being bitten... Sorry, couldn't resist that Awa Rich).
Very droll.
The warm humid weather of the previous week had brought forth a profusion of small mushrooms in the grass. Nothing of any culinary interest but excellent places for wee folk to seek respite from the precipitation.
If you think that this critter bears more than a passing resemblance to the blue folk in James Cameron's Avatar, I would point you in the direction of Brian Froud and Alan Lee's book of fairies where you will find several similar looking beings. This book predates Avatar by about 35 years.
If you're too clumsy in your approach to a faerie, it will turn sideways to the sun in an instant, leaving a vestige of its presence, for a few seconds, lingering in the space it occupied.
Very poetic Awa Rich. You just didn't finish it, that's all!
True, but I really enjoyed doing that background. Building up layers of colours, feathering the edges of the tree trunks to make them look out of focus, creating the filigree network of fine branches in the undergrowth.
I am liking these pencils and playing with them has given me some clues for using watercolours better.
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