New Year Drizzle

a wet welcome home

 New Year and more rain, more damp paper and more grey cool days. Summer seems to have taken a vacation this year and while some people are just awash with floods, luckily we had two clear days to end 2010 and so I got some paper dry and have now spent the first free morning back in the studio after the Christmas New Year madness. It is so great just to have the time and mental space to get back into the swing of some drawing. The gardens are a sodden mess, the grass in the back yard is threatening to engulf the dog and the pool has overflowed with monotonous regularity, but also it is cool and dry in the studio so all is a bit right with the world at least.

Before Christmas festivities started in earnest I finished off the Larkspur, which was a present for my sister. She welcomed beautiful Grace in July  so I added her name and birthdate to the bottom of the picture as a keepsake and it came together really beautifully. I am not sure about the whole birth flower list as it seems to be based in the northern hemisphere, and the larkspurs were in bloom in December just at the right time for me to draw it, but tradition is tradition and there is something timeless about the lovely old fashioned flowers which make up the list..

The plan for the new year is to finish off a few projects which I have had on the go, such as the fruit blossoms and an asiatic lily which I started some time ago, and to try to get as many finished as I can before the school year starts again. Most of them are small pieces, so fingers crossed I can get stuck in and get plenty achieved. I have drawn up two new pieces to add to the list today and am going to make use of the damp weather to lay down some watercolour this afternoon. It is too damp to lay in colour and detail on other pieces as the coloured pencils seem to have trouble holding a very fine edge on the damp paper, but I managed to get the lead pencil down before it got too damp so I have something to go on with. I have rescued the sodden agapanthus stalks from the back jungle and am trying to use them and some photos I have been taken during the rare sunny spells, to try to capture one of my absolute favourite flowers. All I need is now is some sun and there will be no excuses for not getting these done by the end of January.