Catching up on a few days worth of challenges – I have already made a few decisions about how I am going to tackle it (and also expect I will bend my own rules).
The push of drawing things I normally wouldn’t draw has been great! I am also enjoying following the flickr and facebook groups (links below) even more than I expected to.  it is SO inspiring and motivating and fun!

Saturday: EDiM02 Draw a nearby tree
The turpentine tree in the middle of the backyard. Most of what I experience of this tree is just the huge straight trunk and can only see the bottom branches (on the right). There are a lot of dark trees in the neighbour’s property behind the fence – the ‘lap and cap’ is very dark due to the heavy rain this afternoon. I had fun playing with values in this sketch.
I had intended to use watercolour, but well, I knew as soon as I started that it would be ink only.
Drawn with my Sailor Pen 55deg Fude nib, De Atramentis Mixed grey Ink (blue, brown and a little dilution solution).

Monday: EDiM03 A Curtain and EDiM04 Bottle(s) of herbs or spices
Because Sunday is a day of rest and worship, I have two challenges to do on Monday. I picked a random collection of bottles/ containers from the spice rack and then drew in the background a very retro macrame lace curtain that has special significance to me. BTW these days macrame is very cool!

I was happy with the ‘erb bottles (aside: why do you Americans ignore the H????) and some of the crazy effects of using a spray bottle under and over my ink for my curtain. The raw sienna ink that I recently mixed was a little yellow … and well really the curtain is beige so I have made it look very more retro. And overall the composition is not doing it for me. I have refrained from adding text at the moment and am thinking about continuing the composition across the spread to include the next challenge/s… I am going to enjoy extending this tomorrow!

Note: this was draw with a variety of different De Atramentis inks – brown. mixed raw sienna (yellow and brown) mixed grey, black, magenta, dark green and a mixed light green … I think I got a little carried away with how many today.

A few thoughts that I had this morning about what my goals/rules might be for EDinMay15:
1. I want to be experimental as much as I can (not doing ‘ink and wash’ in a standard way) and that I will be focusing on using coloured inks.
2.  I want to keep my sketches contained to a single page of my Alpha 9 x 6 book so that they look like a set
3. I often get bored drawing single isolated objects so I want to combine a few days into a single composition or think of a way to tell more of a story.

As you can see from the comments about today’s sketch, point 2 and 3 are potentially conflicting. Oh well! BUT it does prove something to me, that doing a project that you work on over a number of days opens the door to new stuff. And new stuff is always good! (hmm, ‘stuff’?… I am being very descriptive, aren’t I?)

So stay tuned with what I end up doing with this page for the next challenge ‘something hot’ (and try not to draw hot tea!)

This is part of a daily sketching challenge during the month of May… it is not too late to join (just start with the challenge for today and then catch up if you can)
Join the facebook group
or the flickr group
A summary of previous years challenges I have been part of is here (plus the list)
A few thoughts about the ups and downs of taking part in daily challenges is here

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