Friday, November 6, 2009

Tiny watercolor book & more garden images


Another wonderful day in San Antonio!  After performing the requisite tasks of the day I gathered my camera, watercolors, pencils, sketchbook, and my cute & tiny watercolor book and headed outside.
I walked around the garden and admired the recently cleaned-out lavender/sage berm.  It had become quite overgrown with nutgrass since we've had so much rain.  The mowers spent some extra time working in the bed, and I planted a new lavender in place of one I lost over the summer.

This berm is over 30 feet in length.
May Night salvia on right edge, and lavender mounds to the left of it.



Looking back from the opposite end.  This side has Russian Sage.



Close-up of Russian Sage & the bees (see one in the lower right corner?)



A cool piece of limestone dug up during a garden project



Here's another one.  Oh, how I love rocks!

We live over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_Aquifer which means we have a tiny little bit of bad (BAD!) soil barely covering hundreds of feet of limestone.  Soil-amendment takes on a religious fervor if you are a gardener in this area.  The soil is incredibly alkaline.



my roses are very happy right now


This is my cute little watercolor sketchbook,
purchased from Strikebooks on Etsy



here's the inside cover.  It is lovely.



one of my tiny drawings to which I will later add watercolor
(one of our outdoor light fixtures)



A modified contour drawing of my shoe,
which I later filled in a bit with prismacolor pencils
(Hey!  I didn't say they would be good, just that I would be posting them!)

I'm really pushing myself to spend time drawing and/or painting every day.  I want to get better, to be more accurate in proportion/perspective, and working with intent on a daily basis is the only way I will get there.  I feel that by devoting some studio-time to these activities I will be improving my skill-set in a more general way.

4 comments:

  1. LOVE the journal. Your drawings are great, no apologies.

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  2. Leslie, your garden is gorgeous! And I love your little journal and your sketches. How do you like the texture of the paper in the Strikebooks journal? It's evidently all hand-made and I'm wondering how it "feels" for sketching and painting. (Thanks for the link to their Etsy page, too.)
    cheers,
    Linda in Houston, soon to be San Antonio!

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  3. Thanks, Linda. Let me know when you are ready to come over here for a cup of tea. The Strikebook that I own has cold-press 300 lb watercolor paper, which has a rougher texture than hot-press. It is not as conducive for pencil-work as it is for watercolor. I like this texture a LOT, however, so even the drawings on this paper please me.

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