Thistle

T is for thistle today! Another one for my Natural Patterns Alphabet series:

“Thistle,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

You can see all of these prints so far in my Natural Patterns Alphabet Shop Section.

During my drawing, I discovered many wonderful things about the thistle:

1. Don’t you just love the word! Thistle. This is a truly great word, and it sounds as prickly as it is in real life.
2. So many different textures to draw—what fun!
3. It is somewhat of a despised plant in the garden—a weed. It’s fun to admire weeds.
4. The beautiful shape of the plant, with it’s prickly bulb and flowing top.

Nature is as beautiful as ever, even the weeds.

Quit Your Day Job Button Celebration: week 5

I’m rounding the corner on my Quit Your Day Job Button Celebration. With 80 original hand-drawn buttons in the bag, I’m beginning to be able to see the finish line somewhere in the distance.

For any of you who submitted reader’s choice button ideas on the first post and others, I’m planning to do a group during the last week of my celebration (about two weeks from now), so stay tuned.

Some things about this week’s set:
-I got into a leaf theme, and as I am often inclined to do, I created a little mini-series of buttons with that theme.
-I tried out some black buttons, which was a fun twist.
-If you recently saw my girasole post (the one with the sunflower), you might check out the last button from this week. It’s a spiral inspired by the pattern in the center of a sunflower.

Yay for buttons! You can see all 80 so far in this flickr group. And without further ado, this week’s buttons:

Mary Oliver

It seems that lately, I’m doing more art business than I am art! And so it must be sometimes—there is show logistics and emails and orders. I am looking forward to the Fall when I will be able to have more of a balance. So, no drawings today, but I will let Mary Oliver draw you a picture with a poem.

I love Mary Oliver—her poetry is beautifully organic and honest. She has this way of creating a beautiful natural image and then weaving it into an astounding message about life. I have mentioned her on this blog before, but recently one of her poetry books found me at a library book sale, and I felt like it was destiny!

Here’s a poem included in that book, a collection of poems about birds called Owls and Other Fantasies:

“Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond”
by Mary Oliver

As for life,
I’m humbled,
I’m without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched

though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen—
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort—
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

To the Chapel

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might know that I’m getting married this September. Weddings present a lot of creative opportunities, but of course because of the art I do, I started think about invitation designs, oh probably within 24 hours of getting engaged. I finally put pen to paper this Spring, and now I think it’s finally safe to give you guys a peek since I think all parties concerned have received their invitations.

We’re getting married at my family’s home in Aspen, Colorado at the end of September, so the theme I picked Aspen leaves and trees as the theme of the invitations. We’re having a smallish, somewhat informal, destination wedding, so we decided to make it an all-inclusive weekend, and we’ve invited everyone to the couples’ shower, rehearsal dinner, and wedding. (We’re having a couples’ shower in the week right before the wedding because we thought this would be the time that the most number of people would be able to come since they’ll be traveling already.)

As you can see, there are three pieces to the invitation—an actual invitation, a schedule of events, and an RSVP postcard that includes all three events. I got the first and last piece printed on white cardstock and then the schedule of events is printed on recycled banana leaf paper. We used recycled brown envelopes to add to the natural feeling. This was a fun way to do it, and I’m happy with how all of it looked together. It’s a lot of fun to get the RSVPs back in the mail, it really signals this final countdown to the wedding!

Well, I’m sure there will be more wedding news coming your way in the next month, as I’ll be going off to Colorado for the wedding and then Mexico for my honeymoon!

Girasole: turning toward the sun

Girasole (gee-rah-so-lay) is the Italian word for sunflower, and the letter G for my Natural Patterns Alphabet.

It literally translates to “turn sun,” which I realized when looking at the wikipedia page is probably after its heliotropism—how the sunflower follows the sun throughout the day. I know I had heard of this before, but now it has fully gelled—what an amazing thing—kind of makes it even more like a person, standing tall in a field, and turning towards the sun!

“Girasole,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, available in my shop

While drawing this, I also realized what an intricate pattern the sunflower has in its center. I spent quite some time trying to draw the spiral pattern, but in the end decided it was too much visually to have the petals and the center spiral in one piece. Maybe I’ll have to do a button!

In other news, I’m really excited to be going to the San Francisco MOMA tomorrow to see Natural Affinities, an exhibit of Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams side by side, exploring their mutual interest in the natural world. Sounds right up my alley, and I love both of these artists. Also, they were friends, so it will be really interesting to see their work together. I believe this is a traveling exhibit, but I’m not quite sure how you would find out if it will be coming to a museum near you.

Quit Your Day Job Button Celebration: week 4

I’m in week 4 of my Quit Your Day Job Button Celebration!

I have to admit, it is getting a little harder to come up with ideas, but I made it through 16 more buttons! One of my graphic design teachers always said that you have to come up with ideas until you have none left, and then come up with some more. The ones you come up with after you’ve completely wracked your brain really push you to complete creativity, and those are often the best ones.

Well, let’s hope that’s what happens with this—maybe button #100 will be an entirely perfect button—the most perfect button—maybe it should just be blank white? Nah, I’m not one of those types of artists who tries to make statements like that—I mean, I love to draw. Actually, if I saw someone with a blank white button, I would giggle, because it would be geeky, artist-like, awesome, but now that I’ve written the idea, I can’t do it. I may just have to make one for myself.

Anyway, here are this week’s buttons. Remember, you can see all of the buttons so far in the Quit Your Day Job Button Celebration Section of my Etsy shop or in this flickr page section.

That Kite I Drew

A few weeks ago, a lovely blog reader named Annecy emailed me with some really cool news—she had one of my drawings tattooed on her arm! She had been surfing the internet looking for prospective kites to have tattooed and stumbled on my blog, and my kite.

I’m trying to think of a bigger complement—I mean, she has something I drew on her arm, permanently! Here is my original drawing fromthis post last year:

and here is the picture Annecy sent me of her tattoo:

Ahh, the wonders being an artist are varied, surprising, and always multiplying! Thanks so much Annecy!

The Enormous Tiny Art Show

I just shipped a bunch of drawings out to New Hampshire for the Enormous Tiny Art Show 6, coming up in September at a shop and gallery called Nahcotta! Some of you may have heard of this before—in addition to their shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the owners of Nahcotta also have a wonderful online shop of art all 10 x 10 inches or smaller that grew out of a biannual exhibit at the gallery called The Enormous Tiny Art Show. I will be participating in their Fall in-house exhibit where the walls will be hung top to bottom with an enormous amount of tiny art. Here is their beautiful card:

I can’t tell you how excited I am about being a part of this—especially once I saw all of the other artists showing—so many wonderful artists that I am honored to be included along with them! As you probably also know, I love small art—in fact almost all of the art I do fits the 10 x 10 inch and under requirement. What this really means though is that the work will be affordable for a wider range of people, which is also great!

I wish beyond wishing that I could go to the show opening, but alas I will have to settle for a virtual tour as I am California-bound at the moment. I believe the entire show will also be online, so I will let you know when it’s up.

Watermelon

Hello there! Another new one for my Natural Patterns Alphabet series!

5 x 5 inches, prints available in my shop, and now you can see the whole set in its own Natural Patterns Alphabet Shop Section!

I’ll be honest—I’m getting to the bottom of the bin on the letters I had ideas for. Watermelon surprised me because “w” was stumping me. Maybe you guys can help—here are the letters I have left: e, g, h, i, k, t, v, x, y. Anyone got any bright ideas for these letters? I have a few, but not many of them grab me, and I could use a few more suggestions to pick from. If you’ve been following the series, there are a few loose criteria: it must be from nature, it should have some sort of pattern element, and it would ideally have something that would be fun to translate into black and white. The word can be either in Italian or English. Get those brains working!

Thanks a million! Happy weekend!

Quit Your Day Job Button Celebration: week 3

I’ve made it to week three of my Quit Your Day Job button Celebration, and I’m almost half-way done, with 48 original hand-drawn buttons in the bag! If you’re new to this blog and wondering what in the world I’m talking about, read this post. Here’s a view of my button celebration on the road at a craft show last Saturday:

I put them on a special little table at the entrance to my booth so they would get the most foot-traffic. This worked really well—so many people were stopping and looking, and some even buying!

You can see all of the buttons so far in my special button celebration shop section.

Here are the buttons for this week:

I went a little French with the first set—what fun! Otherwise I just keep clipping along, drawing whatever sounds the most fun/silly/ridiculous/and in need of a button in its name. Mainly, if it makes me giggle, it’s in! I hope you’re all enjoying these! I will be doing some reader’s choice buttons soon, so keep up the suggestions. Again, read this post for more info.