Ruth

Leonora, I really can't believe how gorgeous each of these pages are. The drawing is just inspirational and the information adds a whole other dimension to each page. The way you have arranged each page is so pretty and cohesive. Really really lovely!

Contour drawings make me laugh when I look at them! I do think they will help my observation skills especially if I did more of them or did them before every drawing just for fun.

These were definitely two very different flowers. The columbine flower fell apart before I could finish drawing it, but it had very unusual petals (see top of picture for the real petals). Drawing these flowers has made me want to restudy the parts of a plant because each of the recent flowers I have drawn in this journal had me looking up flower parts and I still feel a little unclear about what was what. I would have called the sepals on the columbine petals...I found myself pondering the pollinators who would prefer these two plants - one with a very flat landing pad and one where you would need to approach the flower from underneath. Because the flower fell apart I was better able to discern its separate parts. If you had enough flowers to do this, I can see the advantage of taking a flower apart to better understand its components. I like to have plenty of room for the image so I sometimes have additional notes on another page.

Pattern around flower center *might* become the top of the seedhead. Sawtooth leaves. Flower opened today and hairy bud covering fell to the ground. Different life stages...bud, flower open, later followed by seedhead. Reading about the plant made me decide to dig it up and replant it with more compost so it has better drainage. It is such a dramatic flower.

I heard a lot of different birds singing but could not see any of them except a crow flying and some mocking birds...which made me wish I could recognize birds by their songs. I was sitting in my backyard and drawing my neighbor's tree when the other neighbor started mowing which fairly overwhelmed the rest of the sounds. But it was fun to capture the tree before most of its leaves were on and the structure could be easily seen.

Taking the photo of my drawing made me realize that I would like to practice getting more definition in the middle values. I like the way you pointed out that when you squint you may be surprised by some of the bright and dark spots. I also kept smearing the pencil marks as I was drawing (haha...accidentally blending where I didn't want blending).

I keep forgetting about using stippling and I love the daisy technique you showed us. I still want to work on ALL of them!

As a photo, I would notice the details only in broad strokes...yellow bird, green leaves, stick. Drawing it caused me to take note of many details about the bird, the shape of and the light on the leaves, shape of the branch, the lichen and the moss on the stick...even though not detailed in my drawing.