Start of the new year—decorations put away, year end accounting prepared, courses organized for school—now back to my real work. Cold raw gray days so depressing, need to get motivated and the best thing (besides sitting in every sunbeam I can find) is drawing, soooo I decided to draw the same thing over and over every day for a month. Decided on this shell with all its twists and turns, spiral and broken bits, an endless source of subject! Trying to establish a habit of drawing daily as the semester starts and my life gets crazy again!

Studies of Shell

Also, working on developing some sketches into repeats—so much to learn. I learned to do this the old, pre computer way with tracing and copying from Joyce Storey. I have since written and taught programs to do this on the computer using photoshop many, many years ago and I still teach Photoshop but not for this. So I know the pieces but a bit overwhelmed at putting it all together. Signed up for an online course in repeats on Pattern Observer and it helped put the bits together. Here’s one of my first goes afterwards. The original sketches were done at Bartram’s Gardens several years ago, scanned, cleaned up—and then the work began.

Leaves in halfdrop repeat