Sketch into Spring ~ 12 & #13 Play with Lines & Shapes

Doodles.  Who doesn't love to doodle?!  But Alisa's idea for giving us these prompts is that she feels, 'having a good understanding and appreciation of lines will make you better at drawing'  Well I'll take, and need, any, and all the help I can get!  Haha.  She also says, 'Lines and shapes go together like peanut butter and jelly' - 'most drawings are simply shapes filled with lines'.  I had a lot of fun creating shapes & lines and just let my pen do the work.

I think my favourite from these two pages is the triangle and rectangle line.

Well, until next time............
...........thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*

Sketch into Spring #9 Capture the Weather

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this prompt.  Alisa, our teacher, lives across the street from the beach and so spends time down there, watching the ocean and the skys and their ever changing colours.  She advised taking photographs so that we can study them later, as obviously they don't move about and change, (unless you live in the wizarding world with Harry Potter of course).  I took my photos on Monday when the sky was changing minute by minute.  We had sun and light clouds, then dark clouds and rain; the sky was beautiful.

Now, I have no idea what colours to use to get different shades of greys and the blues in the sky and the whites/greys of the clouds, so I just played about with my paints until I got what I thought were the colours I saw in my photos.

I just made simple paint patches on my page and did some writing.  I enjoyed this and think I may explore colour mixing further at some point.

Well, until next time............
.........thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*

Sketch into Spring #6 Fill a page with pattern

I had lots of fun with this one.  So much so, that I ended up doing four pages!  Yaay!
Very simple patterns, coloured with watercolours.  Perfect for 'in front of TV' play, using a waterbrush.  No muss, no fuss.

#7 will definitely be a challenge for me ~ go buggy ~ 'Representational' will be the watch word for my attempts me thinks, Watch this space.........

Until next time.........
.......thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*

Sketch into Spring #5 Get loose

Well I was looking forward to having a go at, 'Getting Loose', but boy did I find it hard!!  I'm not delighted with what I ended up with, but it's better than the three efforts that are now assigned to the collage box, lol.  It is better with some black pen on it, but, again, I don't like the yellow 'flowers', (very loose interpretation there).  But, (gosh what a but-head I am today, lol :O), I'm glad I had a go, and I will try it again - behind closed shutters that is.
The prompt was to wet down the paper, drop on watercolours so that they bleed around the paper and then when it's dry, make something of it with markers/pen.  I ended up having to cheat a bit and kind of 'draw' some flower type shapes in order to get anything at all that I could work with when dry!  Anyhoo, here is what I did :-

I'm grateful that the next prompt is to 'Fill a page with pattern'.  Yay!  Nice relaxing doodling. Thanks Alisa ;)
I think I may need to get some new watercolours.  I love my pencils but they just aren't adequate for some things (or that could just be me of course), and the wee pans I've got are almost done. Now do I go for pans or tubes? Hmmm.....what do you think?  Bearing in mind I have 20+ more prompts for this class and a new watercolour class starting on Monday.  Thanks in advance for your kind thoughts, *hugs*

Now until next time..........
........thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*

Sketch into Spring: #4 Illustrate the stages of growth.

When I first saw this prompt, I thought, Whaaat!? And when I saw what other people in the Flickr group had done, I felt very intimidated. In fact, I nearly skipped this prompt altogether ((hanging head))
But yesterday was a beautiful bright day and my hubby had just potted up our tomato plants when I saw the buds and some wee flowers and some immature fruit and remembered I had some tomatoes on the vine in my kitchen. *Light bullb!* Lol. I took several photos and then took more photo's of my strawberries that are also just beginning to flower and produce immature fruit there too! Hmm, maybe I'd do both!
I didn't. But I may have a go at doing the strawberries this evening; I don't know yet.

I used a pencil to lightly sketch, then went over it with a fine liner pen and then coloured with my watercolour pencils and an aqua brush. 

I am quite pleased with the results. Whodathnunk?! Lol. I'm really looking forward to the next one, which is, 'Get loose'. Intrigued? Well you can either join in and check it out, go through the flickr images or wait and see what I come up with, hehe. 

But until next time............

.......thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*

Sketch into Spring #2 Use nature in Printing & #3 Capture colour

For the second prompt Alisa challenged us to use nature in our art. Using her beautiful example as inspiration I went outside to my garden to see what I could perhaps use. There isn't much there at the moment, but I found a stem of Lavender from last years gowth, some leaves from an Astilbe plant, a sprig of Rosemary and a Clematis flower. I had a lot of fun mixing paints, brushing it on, dipping the flowers, stamping with the leaves or using them like a paint brush.

I really like the results.

For the third piece Alisa said to 'Capture Colour'; to look outside and paint the colours in my garden, and paint the weather. Ok, I thought; I'll give it a go. 

Today was a mixed bag. The sky was grey in some parts, but clear and sunny in others and we had had some rain.

There are lots of green leaves on my strawberry plants, they have some wee flowes forming that I hope bode well for a luscious crop of fruit. I have a miniature cherry with blossom and some Winter Polyanthus flowers just going past their best. 

I struggled a little with this page. Just letting the paint drip drop onto the page and lifting it to make it run down. It's not ordered or clear and it didn't seem to make sense, but a few hours after doing it, I can see what I was looking at and I am satisfied with it. 

The next prompt, #4, is to 'Illustrate the stages of growth'. 

Need to do a lot of thinking about that one. 

But until next time ................

..........thanks for popping by to say 'Hi'

Sketch into Spring

I've joined an online class by Alisa Burke called Sketch into Spring. It's a mini class over 30 days with simple ideas, prompts and lots of inspiration. I love Alisa's work. I have only been following her for a short time but have been inspired enough to want to try one of her classes and as my creating time is quite limited, a mini class seemed ideal. I'm late to the party, as it started in March, but the class is available indefinitely once you have joined, which is great for those with limited time.
Anyhoo, the first prompt was to use as many different words as you can that describe Spring. I've just used a few and drew around a word stencil.

 The rest is doodling with various pens and daubers and I went over the background with pale blue chalk pastel. I really enjoyed creating this.

Until next time............

..........thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*