Mobile Cannery, Tall Lungwort

Spent last weekend in lovely Eugene, Oregon. We stopped by the Center for Appropriate Transport on Saturday to check out their 20th Anniversary Party; had a great time watching folks test-ride ingenious bikes.

Sunday was the Wildflower Festival out at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. As usual, there were so many old friends to catch up with that I didn't end up having a lot of time to sketch the amazing display of flowers; but I did jot down a few doodles of some especially pretty and interesting specimens. 

Had a great chat with a friend who is studying environmental education about how sketching is such a good way to slow down and be present in the moment, and to really spend time observing--even if the final drawing is not especially great, the act of having been there LOOKING is rewarding. She called this "finding a sit-spot," and I like that concept quite a bit! 

It's all happening in Eugene

May is Wildflower Month in Eugene, Oregon! I'm delighted to announce that the Wildflowers of Oregon show that I'm participating in will be on exhibit at the Art Annex all through May. (I'm also really jazzed to be heading to that fine, funky town for the reception, on Friday, May 3--join me?)

In other wildflower news, the poster for the Mount Pisgah Arboretum Wildflower Festival is gearing up for a crazy-fun day on Sunday, May 19. The poster, featuring my oversized Nemophila flowers with the happy dance flies, is probably sprouting up all over Eugene and Springfield right about now...Fun times!

Wildflower Festival Update

When I last updated, it was with watercolor in progress on the first layers of watercolor being laid down for the Wildflower Festival poster. Here's how that turned out:

I then returned to the digital version that we're using for the t-shirt and modified those colors to match the watercolor palette more closely.

An exciting addition to the regular festivities this year is that the Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene, Oregon is hosting an art show devoted to native wildflower paintings, as a way to get even more Wildflower Month activities happening this May. Yesterday I got to work on framing my early sketches and the final painting for this exhibit.

Baby blue-eyes and dance flies as far as the eye can see! If you're in the Eugene area, do stop by the art show--grand opening will be Fri, May 3, 5:30pm – 7:30pm.

Paint to Pixels to Paint

A quick recap: The art for this year's Wildflower Festival poster started off as ideas that I sketched in watercolor, then was adapted to digital art that will work well on the t-shirt for the event. * Una breve recapitulación: El arte para el cartel del Wildflower Festival empezó como ideas explorada en acuarelas, y entonces fue adaptado a arte digital para el camiseta del evento.

Now, I'm doing the final art for the poster in watercolors. * Ahora, estoy pintando el arte final para el cartel, otra vez usando acuarelas.

Oh my goodness. After staring at pixels on the screen for half the weekend, I am really delighted by using real paint this afternoon. It flows! The pigment drifts around in its tiny puddle of water in the most delightful way! Even just "plain green" has a whole universe of color hidden inside of every wash. * Hijole. Me he enfocado en píxeles por la mitad del fin de semana, y ahora usar pintura verdadera es como una revelación. ¡Fluye! Los pigmentos flotan por ahí y por allá en sus charcos dimunitos de agua, y me encanta verlo. Hay un universo de color escondido en cada lavado de un verde simple. 

More updates as the paint dries! * Mas noticias cuando la pintura se seca!

T-Shirt Ideas

The poster design for the Wildflower Festival always gets converted into a t-shirt design as well. I often find that starting with a simplified set of colors that would translate well to screen printing helps me make some of the big decisions about tone and contrast, which then inform the more elaborate art for the poster. Here is a record of the day's experiments! * El diseño para el cartel del Wildflower Festival siempre se convierte en un diseño para camisetas, también. Para mí, trabajar con colored limitados que se traducen bién a serigrafía es útil para hacer los decisiones fundamentales sobre el tono y el contraste, lo que guía el arte mas detallado del cartel final. ¡Aquí hay mi documentación de los experimentos de hoy!

Wildflower Month Logo

This weekend I'm cranking out the final poster art for the Wildflower Festival at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. In the meantime, I took one of my early sketches for that poster and converted it into a logo for the Wildflower Month events that will be happening all over the Eugene area. * Este fin de semana, pintaré el arte final para el cartel del Festival de Flores Silvestres en Mount Pisgah Arboretum. Mientras tanto, he estado adapando uno de mis bosquejos para el cartel para ser el logo para los eventos de la Mes de Flores Silvestres en la ciudad de Eugene.

It has been surprisingly tricky to get a good balance of polka-dots on the white petals of the Nemophila! When things are all simplified and graphic in this logo-style approach, finding the right balance of white space to playful dots makes a big difference. (Perhaps more than if one is painting it realistically in a "bug-chomps and all" sort of approach, you know?) * ¡Me sorprendió la dificultad de encontrar la balanza perfecta de pepitas en los pétalos blancos del la flor Nemophila! La combinción de pepitas juegtónes con el forma tan simplificado y estilizado de la flor ha exijido mucha attención. (Pintándolo en una manera más realistica, mostrando cada mordida de los insectos por ejemplo, daría mas flexibilidad para pepitas imperfectas, ¿no?)

Wildflower Studies

The Wildflower Festival at Mount Pisgah Arboretum in Eugene, Oregon is coming up this spring. I've been invited to do the poster again!

The featured plant is a tiny white flower called  Nemophila menziesii var. atomaria. I've been playing with different possible approaches to the composition-first with digital scribbles, then working out those ideas more in watercolor.

Not sure which view wins yet...I think it will partly depend on how it all interacts with the pollinator! More sketches to come.

Idea-Gathering for Wildflower Festival Posters

It sounds like the official Wildflower Festival posters are going to start appearing around the Eugene/Springfield area of Oregon this weekend! To celebrate, more preliminary sketches from that project--when we were still trying to decide what species of bird, and what species of butterfly, would work best. Ideas, measurements, data, doodles.

Some of those quick drawings of birds singing their hearts out are so funny to me. Makes me think of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, where the song sparrow bursts into a rousing chorus of "On Top of Spaghetti..."

4/22/12 Edited to add: Realizing folks may not have followed the link at the top to see the final poster in all its purple glory, will include that image here. Yay!

Wildflower Season

Mount Pisgah Arboretum invited me to do the poster art for their Wildflower Festival again this year. The event, which is scheduled for May 20, 2012, is always a delightful one--great music, great food, great people, and hundreds and hundreds of local wildflowers with botanists galore to tell you all about them.

The featured flower on the poster this year is the riverine lupine, Lupinus rivularis. Since I am such a fan of talking about sketching as a process, here are some of hidden, early layers in the Photoshop file that show me doodling rough shapes and colors before settling in on the final arrangement.

Similarly, the yellow-rumped warbler went through a lot of different poses and refinements before it ended up in its final state.

Keep your eyes open; volunteers will be putting posters up all over the Eugene/Springfield area soon!

More posts about creating posters for festivals at Mount Pisgah Arboretum:

• Lobster Mushroom
• Monkeyflowers
• Witches's cap with banana slug
• California oatgrass

Lines, lines, lines

I'm working on the Wildflower Festival poster, developing the delightfully complex layers of leaves and stalks and flowers that make up the lupine shrub. I'm at the stage where most of the line-work is done, but I need to look it over and tidy things up: cleaning up any wobbles, adjusting line weights, and making sure that things are overlapping correctly--none of the leaves that are in the back should be drawn on top of a stem or a flower that should be in the front, of course.

Which makes me remember a book that I enjoyed as a child: The Borrowers, by Mary Norton. I enjoyed the story as a child, but I also remember being startled by the illustrations. They are lovely line drawings by Beth and Joe Krush. The illustrators use what, to me, was a totally startling and even rebellious approach: they didn't fuss with planning out the foreground/background relationships too much, so that you can see the lines of stuff in the background right through the stuff in the foreground.

See how you can see the edge of the table right through the tiny man's legs? And you can see the edge of the bed right through the table? And you can see the lines of the bedsheet, as well as the chamber-pot, right through the cane?

Scandal! Or perhaps a clever way to hint that this is all in one's imagination? Or perhaps just a really fun, anti-uptight approach to line drawings? Hats off the to Krushes for being starting and delightful in a way that has stuck in my head since elementary school.

(More images from The Borrowers. Seriously, it's worth a pop by the library to revisit this one.)

All right, back to work for me.

A Flock of Butterflies

Working on the poster art for the Wildflower Festival at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. Amused by the flock of butterflies on the screen, as reference photos.

I'm trying out the spring-loaded nib for my Wacom tablet for part of the line work. It started out feeling much more fluid to draw with, but as the night creeps on, the responsiveness of the nib seems to be amplifying my wriggly-handed exhaustion. To bed, then, with visions of butterflies dancing in my head.