Remember the owls from Day 76? They led to four additional designs using a similar color palette, starting with this floral pattern. I added the orange-red for an extra pop of color.
I also made a discovery with this design: I prefer using a smaller ink tip for drawing details than I had been previously using. I used the smaller tip for the gold foliage and later used that same pen for the fine details on the rest of the designs.
The 2018 winter Olympics are currently happening in Pyeongchang, South Korea and on the day of the opening ceremony, I felt inspired to draw ice skates to cheer on team USA. While I love almost all winter sports, figure skating is the most captivating to me.
Snow skis in that same vein. With these designs I realized (or remembered, rather) just how comfortable using a pencil on paper feels. Some days I go straight to my digital tablet to create more painterly designs, but this week was all about starting on paper with pencil and ink and then applying digital color.
On Day 80 I returned back to the navy and gold color palette, trying a gold background this time and drawing one of my favorite motifs – mushrooms.
It was Valentine’s Day here and I needed a little pink in my artwork.
I thought I was done with the navy/gold palette after the mushroom pattern, but it kept calling out to me. I think the snails are a little quirky just like the owls. Those two designs have become some of my favorites in the entire pillow project! Maybe it’s because they’re animals? I love the swans, too. There might be something to that theory.
Lastly, the final design in the “woodland” style collection. The orange-red was the last of the colors to try on the background. Because it’s so bright, I limited the other colors to just the cream and a touch of gold.
Whew! The weekend is timely. I’m stretching to make these designs the best I can and I’m starting to feel it here at Day 83. The 100th design should arrive in mid-March and I have a small, irrational fear creeping in that I’ll lose steam before finishing. Again, it’s irrational, but also a human response when trying to accomplish something significant.
I’ll just keep going, one design at a time.
Have a good one. ☺
~Christina
