95 degrees F and Spoonflowering

[feng_shui_house]

So far, I am STILL keeping my New Year's Resolution of no procrastination. Either I work on something that's needed doing for a while, or I notice a small job and do it immediately. *fingers crossed*

I have to work on designs more- I have a custom request & I need to fill up a 30 design sampler to order that. Here's a few designs from the past 2 days.

A bat biologist wants to make bat curtains for her kitchen.

Pussycats, drawn in Sketchpad.

https://sketch.io/sketchpad/

Butterfly I drew in colored pencil from a photo I took. Of course, it took a lot of 'shopping to make it good for a design. I am quite pleased with it.

Fingers are cramped. Time for a change of pace, will go out back and fight the Asp. Fern some more. It's the never-ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Yard.

EDIT: In the few minutes it took me to write this post, temp went to 98 F... *whew*


Dug up some more, mostly I'm digging up the 5 ft tall 'sword' plants which are guarding the Asp. Fern against the house. Eventually I'll get to the Asp.

Came in and made another design from a colored pencil drawing I did yesterday. Maybe I'll make a little series of matching designs. I have a few more good butterfly photos I can maybe draw from. Put them all on the same background and they should look nice.

Great Southern White Butterfly

Temperature is now 85 F! Better take advantage of the 'cool'. Can you Dig it, Baby?



The drawing took forever- very detailed markings on this butterfly, and I got to the point erasing wasn't possible before I noticed the head and body were disproportionally large! ARG. It looks like a Dragonfly with butterfly wings. Not unattractive, but not real. SOoo, after I scanned I did a lot of tweaking with Photoshop Elements. So many tweaks, so many. The final result doesn't look that much like the drawing! But I like it, these butterflies are winding up with a nice, old-fashioned feeling.

Zebra Longwing butterfly

I had to stop digging when it grew dark, so didn't get to finish the area, but I did dig up a patch more than 12 feet long, 4 feet wide and about a foot deep (maybe 4 feet long to go). Much of the stuff I dug up went on the secondary compost heap. It's a mountain. ;^)

One day I shall dig under that compost heap and see how much soil has formed.

Comments

[haldane]

Bat curtains - I see what you did there. Visitors will glance and process them as "geometric, floral" but the owner will know.

I saw a fabric design once that looked like roses but if you got closer the flowers were made up of tiny penises. *googles*
https://www.lookhuman.com/collection/1048-floral-penis

they now do phone covers and tote bags, I wonder hoe often anyone notices?

[feng_shui_house]

I think the bat curtains will be adorable. That's the second version- the customer gave me the names of the paint colors in her house, but also gave me leeway to adjust them as I thought fit.

Original color version.

In the second version I darkened the bats, and lightened the central color so there would be more contrast and a lighter effect.

The Penis Posies is extremely well done. I bet if anyone does notice they think they're imagining it. :^)

[pebblerocker]

OH MY GOODNESS I love that bat design. That's perfect!

[feng_shui_house]

Thank you! I bet they'll be fun curtains. :^)

[miwahni]

That bat pattern is amazing! I'm wondering, could you do something similar with owls and flowers, if you had time one day?

I'm thinking of a book I read called The Owl Service where these teens find a dinner set with a pattern which, when traced and cut out, became a series of little owls. But if they'd cut it just slightly differently, the pattern was flowers. The book references the goddess Blodeuwedd, and throughout the book one of the characters kept saying "She wanted to be flowers, but you've made her owls" and no-one had the slightest idea what he was talking about! It was the dinner set pattern, of course.

[feng_shui_house]

It should be possible. A long time ago I made a snowy owl flake and the bits in between could have been flowers. :^) It's deliberately difficult to see the owls because I was trying for a snow crystal look, but I think you can see the possibility with a different owl.

Snowy Owls

[miwahni]

That's a pretty design, all the same.

[feng_shui_house]

Thanks!

[feng_shui_house]

Take a look at this! It's a summary of the book, and includes a photo of a beautiful owl service plate.

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whatson/whats-on/online/magical-books/the-owl-service

[miwahni]

That is amazing! What a lovely dinner set that would be, I'd just love to get my hands on one like that.

[feng_shui_house]

The original is definitely antique. I found a site of a charity supported by the author of the Owl Service book, which includes photos of a few pieces of a different version of the service.

http://www.theblackdentrust.org.uk/supporters_benefactors.php

Chris Lynch has donated three items of the owl service pottery.  They are an exquisite gilded sepia version of the design, which is much more delicate than the gilded green version that provoked the writing of The Owl Service in 1960.  Alan Garner has been trying to discover who created the design for over forty years, but it took Chris Lynch's determined sleuthing to tie it down to Christopher Dresser.  Between 1862 and 1904, Dresser worked for Minton, Wedgwood, Watcombe, Linthorpe, Old Hall and Ault potteries.