In last week’s post, I promised that you would see another sketch. Well, I did keep my word, and here it is, taken from a photo I took of the Cologne Cathedral on my recent travels. If you have followed my site, you will know I love sketching clouds, and that is why this sky over the Cathedral appealed to me. Nothing I like better than a great mass of brooding cumulus to get me going with the pencils.
I have written a few times about our native Pōhutukawa which we call our Christmas tree, because of its vibrant red blooms tipped in gold which look like decorations, and it always blooms around Christmas time. Last year the flowering was not so spectacular, but this December because of more constant rain, the flowering has been superb. Most of you who follow me will know that I have been working on a new novel, and have been writing like crazy to complete the first draft. It is almost there. So, before I embark on the last pages, I thought I’d relax with a little sketching. I have chosen to do a close-up sketch of emerging pōhutukawa flowers. Hoping it will look okay.
This past week or so I’ve been attempting to build the word count on my novel, and I have done reasonably well – a small pat on the back for that. However, I decided I’d take a short break and do another sketch. When I took the photograph a while back, I thought ‘that’s nice’, and with that mediocre response I chose to work up a sketch from the photo. Probably not a good premise to begin with. Or, was it the new phone, with the new camera which is brighter in colour than my last one?
Anyway, I kept going with this sketch, and kept adding this and that, then trying to remove this and that. I guess I should have given up at this stage.
The this and that were the various mediums I tried. I am not a watercolourist but sometimes I can play around and have something turn out okay, but this wasn’t one of those times. I used Aquarelle pencils too, and remembered how bright they were once I put water through the pigment. I used water-soluble ink pen, too and the ink spread too far! So I kept adding and taking away until I came up with the next version of messing stuff up.
I added more pencil across the sky and hill, not adding anything in my opinion except to make the sketch muckier. But I decided to show the sketch regardless, as it just goes to prove work doesn’t always turn out as well as it might.
I am not going to beat myself up about this one, but really, I have been making the same ‘mistakes’ so long, you’d expect that I’d learn when to stop, wouldn’t you? I could have just got out a new piece of paper and done something different. Left the watercolour bit for another time.
Better luck with your work. All the best, Vivienne.
Sometimes the days are too filled, don’t you find? The past weeks certainly have been. There was the matter of extra people in the house, followed by my writing critique group Monday, which meant writing new scenes for my novel that I wished others to comment upon. Book Club was on Tuesday, and Wednesday I spent time with my daughter, as it was her penultimate day before departure. First thing today, I dropped her in the city, returned home and spent a number of hours cleaning up the place as tomorrow the plumber is coming early to fix our shower, and, someone is delivering a new bed. They are expected around 7am! And that’s early for a ‘retired’ ( or I should say ‘tired’) person like me.
ARTISTRY 