I've been working on a drawing of a raspberry plant. It's a cutting that I took from the bush in our side yard. I'm excited to be working from a live plant this time! It really does make all the difference.
I had started with a nice drawing and began inking and doing some colored pencil work, but it was looking rather flat. I realized that I needed to go back to some basics and do a light and shade study of the leaves in particular to get some depth and form back into the drawing.
So, this is the rough light and shade study on tracing paper that I will continue to tweak. I'll use this as a reference point when redoing the original drawing so that my shading/light looks correct in colored pencil. Stay tuned for more progress!
Who knew chives could be so pretty? :) Our neighbors have a bunch of chives in their flower bed and they have a beautiful, light purple flower. When you clip the stem off, you can clearly smell the oniony scent of chives.
The bloom consists of a cluster of small, individual blossoms that together look similar to a thistle. Lots of detail to draw each one, so I settled for a looser interpretation to get the idea across.
I had a chance to try a version of the tulip in colored pencil. It's a beautiful purple/pink color with white at the top of the petals. I had some difficulty rendering the white -- I added shadows in various shades of gray, but am not sure it turned out very well.
If anyone has any suggestions/comments on how you handle this sort of problem - especially when rendering on a white background - that would be appreciated!
This is a graphite study of a tulip from my flower bed. I've been wanting to draw them for some time and finally have had the chance. I hope to do an additional version in colored pencil. This was a good place to start, though, giving me time to really study the shape, shading and form without worrying about color. 
I've continued drawing the maple tree buds out in front of our house. A few weeks ago, I posted them as they were just popping out, all red and berry-like.
In this update, the red covering has fallen off and the bundled, silvery-green leaves are emerging. There are some beautiful red highlights both in the branch and the buds. This was done in pen and ink and colored pencil.
This is a pen and ink and colored pencil drawing of a Vietnamese mossy frog (Theloderma corticale). I saw these at the Toledo Zoo awhile back and was fascinated by their bumpy, mottled appearance. They blend right in with the moss and rocks in their habitat. On one hand, it was rather difficult to render, but on the other, very fun to just let the pen squiggle around all of the irregular shapes and patterns.
I've been working on a drawing of a raspberry plant. It's a cutting that I took from the bush in our side yard. I'm excited to be working from a live plant this time! It really does make all the difference.
