A cheery bird and a froggy talisman
Dear Nikki/Dear Sarah--Y2/D12 of our daily drawing exchange
Hi Nikki,
It has been unrelentingly grey and wet today—another atmospheric river—and I couldn’t bear to do another black and grey drawing. I needed COLOUR! I recently bought a small set of oil pastels, so I took them out for an inaugural spin. I have no idea what to do with them (these ones are water soluble apparently, but that will have to wait for another day). I just wanted to make something cheerful! I have a few little wooden birds, handmade locally by an elderly German man, so I drew one of them. I’m going to enjoy experimenting with a new medium.
I really enjoyed writing today, tracking the emails and beefing up my character’s emotional turmoil. Amazing how the logistics play out (or don’t).
See you soon.
XO S
Hi Sarah -
yes, today’s work on our book was fun. I feel as though I know our characters pretty well now, so adding a new location and another person with whom to interact in the new scene wasn’t difficult. I’ll kind of miss hanging out with the gang we’ve created.
The perspective and proportion in today’s drawing aren’t as terrible as they appear to be in the photo. I wanted to play with the idea of magic realism and folkloric cannibalism (a theme in the novel lying under my glasses) by including the book and glasses in the background and adding a green jade frog to the back cover of whatever is being read (said talisman was what drove our hero to embark upon his quest in Macunaima). The morphing of the left hand into that of a frog’s hand (paw? foot? appendage?) was a happy accident I enhanced based on the three readings we wound up discussing today in class (The Metamorphosis, The Nose, and Macunaima).
I think if you brush over the colours you’ve laid down with your water pen, they will smoosh… Not a technical term, smoosh, and probably better tested with swatches rather than on a finished drawing.
It’s wet and unseasonably warm here at the moment. We’re losing our lovely snow! We’re all hoping this doesn’t last too long, as everything is just mushy.
See you tomorrow!
Nikki