Fraser's sedge marathon

I sat down Monday morning at 9:00 to see if I could finish this drawing in one day.  Hmmm.  That was 16 hours ago.  I don't think I've ever worked so long in one stretch before!  For the most part, fun.  Am I done yet?  Well, I am pretty darn close and I'm needing to call it a day.  In fact, I can hardly string a sentence together, but I have pictures to show my progress.  I took a photo roughly every hour or two.  In my next post I will give a better account of where things stand.  For now, enjoy the show!

Mother's Day Bliss

I am here.  I am working.  I have not given up on this monstrous project.  I admit it... this one has nearly stumped me to the point of losing sleep.  My deadline is 72 hours away and I am entering panic mode -- almost.  How can one paint or draw a whiter than white flower on white paper, when there is no possibility of darkening the whites (since the flower is just a puff of filaments, like a sparkler)???  I thought of painting it.  I thought of drawing it in graphite.  I finally decided to work it in colored pencil.  On drafting film.  Here's the theory: colored pencil is prettier than graphite but not as time consuming as watercolor.  And the film takes the colored pencil strokes so easily, with the added benefit that it is erasable, where paper is not.  Turns out this is a key feature of the project, since I seem to be erasing more than I am drawing!

Thus far, I have worked on 8 leaves of the clump.  But I have redrawn three of them at least twice.  I could be done by now!  The tricky thing with drawing on film is that it can only hold just so much pigment, and then it becomes saturated.  No matter how much you scribble away on it, nothing more will go down and you start to get an unfortunate sheen sitting on top of the picture.  So you have to be very judicious applying the pencil layers.  It takes about four passes and that's it.  First I've drawn each leaf with an undertone of Tuscan red.  This establishes the basic form of the leaf.  On top, I'm adding an olive green, a chartreuse and a dark green.  Period.  Here's a close up of the first layer of the next leaf I'm working on:

I have a few leaves to tuck in the back of the clump.  Then I will tackle the flower stalks.  I have a brilliant (or maybe idiotic) idea of a way to offset the flowers.  Stay tuned!

Before I sign off, I just have to give a shout out to my kids, who gathered last night to prepare me an early Mother's Day feast.  This was the first time in six years that we've all been together for a Mother's Day celebration.  And I have to say, there has been considerable improvement in the last six years in culinary skills.  They could open a restaurant; I'm not kidding.  Happy cooks.  Happy kids.  Happy mom and dad.  Thank you!!