Gretchen and Mary in Ellen's: Wind

"Wind"
Collab with Gretchen and Mary
in Ellen's Mole

The half collab left for me by Gretchen reminded me of blowing hair.  When we visited Slovenia, many women (and men) had hennaed hair.

Collaboration with Gretchen in Stephanie's: Hen Turning Eggs

Turning the Eggs
Collaborations with Gretchen

Turning the Eggs, Collaboration by Gretchen Owen and Mary Stebbins Taitt
markers and pens.  Dedicated to Hennie Mavis.

Collaboration with Gretchen in Mike's Round 3

Apologies to Gretchen, Mike and Aya for taking those absolutely gorgeous delicately rendered sunglasses and putting them on a pig. I felt driven to do so for some reason. Aya, you can print the original post by Gretchen and make something else out of it for her!

The scan never comes out quite like the original. I've included a detail because it doesn't show up right in the scan.

My part was done in Faber-Castelle PITT pigment artists pens and gel pens. A touch of oil pastel on the glasses. Gretchen's pens are much nicer than mine--Gretchen, tell me again what kind of pens they are.

Click the images to view them larger.

Collaboration with Gretchen

Dragonfly Symbiosis

A Story for Gretchen

Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to go out in the woods and meditate. One of her favorite places to sit in ZaZen was Lycopodium Knoll, a small rise in the sandy woods above Blue Heron Lagoon. The knoll was covered with lycopodia, and the girl would sit with her back to a red maple and her middle finger touching her thumb and her hands resting on her knees. And sit.

One day, however, her serenity was disturbed by deerfly. The deerflies buzzed nosily around and kept landing on the girl’s arms and shoulders. They were trying to bite her.

Suddenly, there was a much larger, louder buzzing and a huge insect landed on her knee. In its mandibles was a deer fly. The dragonfly noisily chomped down the deerfly and a moment later, zipped out and snagged another. When it had eaten that one, it snagged a third, and continued until it had eaten the entire platoon

Then the dragonfly sat calmly on the girl’s knee waiting. Each time another deerfly or mosquito homed in on the girl, the dragonfly captured it and ate it. The girl acted as a food magnet for the dragonfly and the dragonfly protected the girl from insect bites. And this is a true story. Mary Stebbins Taitt (Click image to view larger.)

In my Moleskine

Typically, my style is very abstract. For me though, this exchange is about trying new things. While I'm sure a lot of my stuff will fall into the abstract category, I'd like to continue pushing myself into drawing more realistic things. Maybe even a person or a self portrait at some point! I've always considered myself terrible at drawing people! I need to get over that!

My first piece is a two page spread that started out as something, and turned into something else. I'm pretty happy with the final result though. This was done in colored pencils, a blue Staedtler fineliner pen, and then I went over the whole piece with fluid acrylic paint in a transparent metallic blue color. I like the effect that I got with the acrylic paint. It's difficult to see how it really looks from the photos though.

Here's my second piece. I really like Koi, and I think they're beautiful fish! I believe they're also supposed to be good luck? :) This is probably my first attempt ever at drawing fish. They may be cartoon-like, but I still like them. I did this with colored pencils also.

I still have 1 page left plus my collab page before I'm ready to ship to Mary, but I plan to get started on those this weekend!