Colored Pencil Shaving Relaxation

Not only are colored pencil shaving so pretty, but twisting the pencils through the sharpener is somewhat relaxing.

Drawing Jill Bliss Style

First drawing of a leaf.

Original Leaf

First drawing of a flower - the yellow pen is a little hard to see.

Original Flower

First contour drawing of a flower.

I love the drawing style of Jill Bliss - she focuses on drawing flowers and other nature elements with lots of little lines, dots and other patterns. A while back I purchased her Drawing Nature: A Journal and have decided to finally start using it.

The first drawing is intended to get you to just draw a simple leaf and/or flower to get your baseline to look back at later. I drew a leaf and yellow flower from the park by my work.

Next, you move onto the first exercise: flower contour drawing. Considering I wasn't allowed to look at the page or lift my pen, it turned out not too bad. Jill recommends you spend an hour on your contour drawing - I only spent about ten minutes. I did this on my lunch break, so I didn't quite have the luxury of time. I definitely plan to spend more time on my next contour drawing to really practice looking at my subject.

Macro Monday: Los Gatos Creek Trail

During an evening walk in the Los Gatos Creek Trail, I stumbled across this pretty little Statice plant along the edge of the trail. I love the papery texture of the flowers.

Hearst Castle: Travel Photography

While in Cambria we visited Hearst Castle. The grounds had beautiful flowers and gardens, all of which will be great inspiration.

Cambria Pines Nursery: Garden Photography

Even the Cambria Pines Nursery is too darn cute not to take more garden photos at. They have adorable displays within the nursery and amazing flower beds around the perimeter. We were only here for about 15 minutes, so I had to be quick with my snapshots. I decided to stay away from my usual macro type shots, as those require time and patience without a tripod to ensure you get crisp photos.

I'm definitely making the birdbath display in my future garden!

Cambria Pines Lodge: Garden Photography

In addition to taking macro photos in the Cambria Pines Lodge gardens with my medium camera, I also took more compostie photos of the gardens. I worked to include diagonal and curving lines, pattern and not trying to include everything in the shot. I did take some landscape photos to capture an entire garden section, but with stark light and shadow areas they need some touch up in Photoshop. 

I love these gardens - I definitely want to go back and spend more time taking photos here.

Macro Monday: Cambria Pines Lodge Flowers

I recently stayed at the Cambria Pines Lodge and they have an assortment of beautiful, tucked away gardens. I spent a bit of time with my medium camera going around taking photos only to find out that the dials had been moved and all the photos were blown out. It was such a bright day that I had thought I just couldn't see the screen properly. Note to self - always check the setting before starting a photo shoot!

After properly adjusting the camera settings, I went around with lightning speed to try to capture some photos worth keeping. These are a few of the macro photos I took. I did not have a tripod on me, so I took many more photos than were in crisp focus.

Learning to Watercolor

I'm officially going to teach myself how to watercolor - hooray! I've been wanting to do this for a number of years, but I'm finally putting a plan into motion. I've ordered a set of Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor brushes and plan to follow the projects in Heather Smith Jones' Water Paper Paint book. Usually art books spend an extra long amount of time working on the tedious details, but Heather's book delves right into fun projects. I've got paper and some watercolor paints that have been given to me, so it's almost time to start. I can't wait!