In The Studio Today...

.....I am sketching, sketching, sketching! The cool cloudy weather over the last few days has put me in the mood to spend all of my time at my drawing table with my pad and pencil and a cup or 2 or 3 of tea. I am having visions of pumpkins, sunflowers, acorns, colorful leaves, crab apples......

While a lot of my work of late would be considered, for lack of a better word, whimsical....

I really enjoy doing art that is more realistic, also. I enjoy scouring seed catalogs and magazine photos of plants, flowers, fruits, vegetables, still life's and tableau's.... My method for this type of artwork is to collect a lot of reference photos, and then assemble them into still life's and arrangements of my own on paper. (This is also an excuse to hold onto 10+ years worth of magazines- all neatly arranged in my basement, in what I now refer to as my "reference library". It's also a convenient way to justify and rationalize my addiction to magazines).

An example of what I would consider my "realistic" artwork:

I did this bird painting several years ago, it is available as a note card design on my website.

While many people work with a sketch pad, I most often do not. I get an idea, do some really, really quick and rough thumbnails on computer/printing paper (which barely resemble the finished product, but I know in my mind where I am going with them), and then do the sketch/drawing directly onto my watercolor pad. This  drawing then gets ink and watercolor, and becomes my final rendition.

The cool weather is also, of course, a great time to sit down at the sewing machine (nice segue, huh?). Snoodles at Lilypad quilting has been busy working on some Christmas projects... Hop over to her blog to see what she's been doing with my Oh Holy Night fabric line....

Don't you love the dimension she has given the holly leaves in her project? Fun!

What kinds of creative things are you doing today? Let me know in your comments....