Last week, I planted all of the flower bulbs that I mentioned in my previous post, which in turn inspired today’s sketchbook drawings. It was glorious weather, and I enjoyed soaking up the sun while working in the dirt. I’ve never tried planting flower bulbs, so I don’t know if I’ll be successful. Waiting seems like it’s going to be part of the fun, unless the hungry deer dig them up and have a feast. I have half a year now until I find out!
On the left is an allegorical figure for the month of November. I drew her in an art-nouveau kind of style with a big Frederic Leighton-a-la-“Flaming June” dress in gold. I knew that I wanted to incorporate falling leaves and flying geese, and dry stalks of corn as little November symbols. This painting is not finished, but since it was just as sketchbook exercise, I’m not sure when or if I’ll come back to it.
The pen drawing on the right is Hades and Persephone, and illustrates a little poem that fell out of my head on Monday or Tuesday morning. My husband encouraged me to post the poem, but since I’m much more confident in my silly drawings than my silly poems, I’m not going to indulge myself at this point. Hades, in this context represents the dark earth covering the green potential of the earth until the next growing season. My drawing is pretty loose because this paper doesn’t tolerate erasing well, but keeping most everything very general gave me an excuse to practice some dense cross-hatching.
That’s all for now! I’ll be back later this week with some characters, cats, and calligraphy practice.