September Challenge Day 7

The Bee Balm card from day 3 left me wondering whether adding the leaves was a mistake and comments were divided. I decided to do another card of the same flower using a different photo reference.

Bee Balm #2

The Bee Balm is a very messy flower; the petals go every which way, overlapping, falling over or standing up straight, so one has to be careful to draw the back petals first. I might look into getting some of these for my garden.

It is a good thing that my pen & ink cards don't take long to do, because I spent a large part of yesterday trying to get my photos 'right'. I took photos with 2 different cameras, my phone and 2 tablets, both inside and out - fortunately the sun shone for a while. As I am technologically challenged, Bob helped me out by setting the camera to black & white. This method actually worked very well when taking photos in sunlight but I am afraid that having to remember how to set the camera will just annoy me. I like things simple! At any rate, both tablets and the phone seemed to leave a grey aura around the card, which required a fair bit of manipulating with the Gimp program. The new little camera is almost impossible for me to hold steady, all of the 'buttons' are too small and the pictures rarely turn out. I prefer my old HP camera and will stick with it! I think I have figured out the best way to take photos of my black and white drawings so they only needs a bit of tweaking to be 'white' - time will tell.

My friend, Sheila, is still on the ball and has sent me a few tutorials that I hope will help even more. Guess what I will be doing today!

September Challenge Day 3

Sometimes things don't work out quite the way you think they will.

Bee Balm card

This piece started out as a line drawing of just the flower based on one of Claudia Nice's illustrations, then I added the shading. I was reasonably happy with it but thought that the bottom of the card needed something. So, I went on-line to see what the leaves of the Bee balm looked like and added some to my drawing.

I am not sure if leaves add or detract from the whole; maybe simplicity would have been better.

To see more of the art that has been submitted in this 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge go to http://lesliesaeta.blogspot.ca/2015/09/thirty-paintings-in-30-days-day-three.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/PzFQn+%28Slices+of+Life%29