Signs of Spring
After getting all mopey this afternoon, I decided that I’d better do something, even if it was just a sketch one of the everyday matters challenges. So I decided to draw the magnolia tree in the front yard for edm challenge #59: signs of spring. When the flowers on this tree start to come out, I get cheered up because I know it is going to start getting really warm. (One year, the tree started budding in November because it was unseasonably warm.) I used my new Caran d’Ache Neocolor’s, which are really like hi-tech crayons. 
I wanted to see what they were like with water so I smeared some on with my fingertip. It was kind of fun and I can’t wait to do some more stuff with them. I dug through my childhood sketchbook and I found this drawing I did of the same tree back in 1998 (I was fifteen!). Looking through my old sketchbook was enlightening and I could see a definite upward progression in my skill level during the two years that I kept it. It was encouraging to see that I was improving even then.
4 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Great job Carolyn, it looks just like the magnolia I have in my yard. I’m hoping it might bloom early this year so I get to see it again before we move house. Looks like you will have a bumper display of flowers this year!
This is really nice, the colors are dead on! I love magnolia’s! Good job.
Magnolia seems to be an ongoing theme in this challenge
Yours are beautifully done and make me look forward to seeing mine again when spring comes south.
BTW - I have a patchwork mag article that talks about using Neocolor II crayons to work on fabrics. I have bought them but haven’t had time to give them a go yet.
While improvement is a neverending process, it is hard to improve a lot once you’re already this good. It is more like a hyperbolic curve where the interim spaces keep reducing as the ends get closer and closer to the axes. So, more power to you – practise more so that your scope of improvement keeps reducing as your efforts edge closer and closer to perfection!