My next door neighbour is a gardening maniac. I hate her intensely, of course, because she can grow roses and I can't. She and her husband (both retired) put in a $25,000 water feature that makes me crazy on the principle of misdirected expenditure of funds. Having said that - Mother Nature is my Avenging Partner. She regularly sends herons in to eat their ornamental fish.
That said - I am shameless in capitalizing on her floral escapes and will draw whatever bloom makes its way to my side of the fence. The clematis is just such a character.
Alrighty. This sketch is not what I would call a masterpiece. And yet ... I really do like the way the flower came out - and the anther/pistil (lower left) is really exotic looking up close. I love how the pistil looks like the boom-part of a fireworks. Not overly fond of the leaves but - hey - not every bit is a winner.
It occurs to me from time to time that I should have separate journals for seperate types of sketches. The botanicals for sure would have their own book. I image that would be a terrific single-theme volume. I would love to see that, frankly. Every page its own lovely flower. Lots of colour - lots of detail. I still might just scan them all and convert it. Won't be quite the same, however. Original watercolour (or original anything) has a magic all unto its own.
But here's the problem with having multiple books. You end up with mulitple books. And knowing me and my predisopositions - more than one book would lead to a cascading of problems that I really don't need. Do I have the right book for what I'm going to sketch? What happens if subjects straddle more than one topic area? How do I pick which one it goes in? Do I then make 2 sketches, one for each? Or copy / paste from one into the other? I can barely keep track of things as it is ... what happens if I *lose* a book? That would be horrifying.
I had two books a while back - one for sketches and one for watercolours. Different paper weights determine proper medium. I found it distracting in the extreme. Every time there was something to draw, I was utterly conflicted about how best to render it. Pastel? Ink? Watercolour? Marker? Bleh. The important thing is having the sketch DONE. I ended up focused on the pastel sketches and then never went back to more than one book at a time.
Having just one book is easy. Do a sketch. Turn the page. Repeat until finished. There is a certain simplicity to that routine. There is also a certain freedom ... it is implicit that there will be good and bad side by each ... no one book will be reserved for the gems. Maybe that's why it's hard to have two books ... the fear of ruining one with a single bad effort.
Bad efforts, mistakes, misses, and messes should not stop the show. If it's bad, just turn the page and do another. I am regularly surprised by my own work in this regard. A crap sketch here, turn the page and I do something decent. Turn the page. Keep going ... it's the forward motion that counts.
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