Was it just a week ago that I picked a branch of tumbleweed out of a fence at a New Mexico rest stop on the highway, humming to myself that Sons of the Pioneers song about tumbleweed?
Has it been just a week since I left colorless winter behind and came home to a muddy garden lush with weeds (and slugs… and sowbugs…)?
Driving through so much flat, brown land back in the heartland had calmed my Squirrel Brain a bit, but as soon as I touched down here at home, it was back with a vengeance. Gotta finish the Call and Response piece! Gotta make a painting from all of those photos! Gotta fertilize, gotta weed, gotta take care of a mountain of mail! But then it slowly dawned on me Sunday evening that I was NOT getting up to go to work the next morning, so I didn’t have to get that all done in one fell swoop. What a luxury! I really can draw every day. I don’t have to give up anything else to make that happen. Happy sigh. My Inner Squirrel is now seated quietly in a yoga position, softly humming the tumbleweed song… which is stuck in my head…
I’ve always wondered what the name of that little weed was. Yesterday a neighbor clued me in to Bittercress – it grows incredibly fast, matures quickly, and once it starts to shoot seeds like a machine gun (thus the nickname shotweed), your garden beds are doomed! On the plus side, it is edible… supposedly tastes like radishes.
Technique Notes – The Bittercress painting was sketched lightly in pencil, then outlined with a Pitt artist pen. I painted the plant with a thin watercolor brush, let that dry, then outlined around the ink lines with white china marker. I then quickly flooded the page (outside of the circle and inside the border) with blue (spring sky blue!) using a fluffy fat brush. I like the “resist” effect so much! Once dry, I added a few tiny shadows, etc. with colored pencil.