Buttons and Pendants and Drawings

I came home from school today to find a present in my mailbox!!!!!!!!!! Rain, thank you SO MUCH for the hand-made buttons and pendant.

The colors and the detail in these are beautiful, I don't know how you did it, but I really like these and can't wait to use them.

This photo doesn't do justice to them. The dark one has purples and greens and white and a deep fuschia and rust colors in it, all done in petal shapes. And the blue ones are deep blue and sky blue and white and grey and a bit of turquoise and a sprinkle of silver. Then there the pastel ones that are yummy enough to be candy. And the striations in the pendant....beiges and off-whites and a touch of rusty color with greens and in the very center is a line of purple..........way too cool!!!!!!!!!!!


Speaking of school, our assignment this week is a composition using symmetry, assymetry, natural balance and unnatural balance. Again a triptych on a single illustration board. BUT, this week, we must use an original collage material and then use a photopied set of that material in black and white, and a hand-drawn set of the same material. I chose to use some photographs I had taken over the weekend and some from last summer of elements around here. The farmers field where the corn is starting to grow, the water tanks at the volunteer fire station on the corner, and a daylily from my garden. The drawing is not coming easily to me, but I am beginning to accept my skill levels and limitations (for the time being until I improve and I WILL improve, I am determined to!). The above picture is of my daylily done in large sizing (for unnatural scale) and the picture to the side is of the same daylily done in miniature sizing for the natural scale. (I enlarged the second photo to publish it here, the actual drawing is approximately 2" square.

Now I have to draw the background and those water tanks. The water tanks and the well cover in front of them are the most challenging for me. They "should" be simple, but somehow the simplest things are always the hardest and the hardest things are manageable?

On another note, we got about 2" of rain here at the house this afternoon while I was in school. Desperately needed rain, I can see the grass turning green as I sit here (and I think I can hear it growing too! LOL)

Oh, and those pencils are no longer new..........but they haven't been since about an hour after I posted the picture of them!!!