A sketch for another Robot painting inspired by SPRING!

donnadavisart (66)in #slothicorn • 6 years ago

A sketch dreaming of Summer mingled with my new robotic obsession.

Yesterday was meant to be another of our crazy New England nor'easter storms. The last few have not been fun. The one positive to come out of these moments of no power and considering our delicate balance between technology and basically sudden 19th century living has resulted in my Singularity paintings, as I am calling them.

Readers will recall I shared an updated sketch of another one of these paintings which is still on my 'digital easel' upon which I have been dabbing here and there daily. I am not going at them with the same quickness I have done paintings for contests and challenges here on Steemit. Having truly hit upon a theme I now wish to explore, I find I want to take my time with them a bit more.

Here is the sketch before applying watercolour to the study.

After a preliminary series of very rough pencil ideas, I like to take the composition I have come up with that I like the best and then do ink and watercolour study. I still consider these a finished piece, but are in a way the stepping stones to the final piece. In their own right, however, I accept them as a stand alone piece.

It is the voyage along the path to final piece that I truly love in making art. Each sketch a 'stone' in a mosaic that creates a final larger piece but still is treasured for and by itself.

In this piece I wanted to again revisit this Singularity creature I keep daydreaming about. Caught between humanity and machine she wonders at a past she cannot quite get a grip on. I liked the counter balance of the delicate floral setting and antiquity of her dress and pose, but the sudden question and jarring wonder at her looking so lovely at the human skull. My animal inclusion included a crow for a two fold reason, both with a bit of humour: One being the obvious similiarty to this somewhat non living being in a garden bed like a scarecrow the other playing on Poe with the raven and skull of his mcabre works.

I always have a lot of little layers in my things that are mainly for my own appreciation and most like not seen by the viewer, but the joy of talking about one's work here on Steemit is one can indulge (over indulge some might say) in pontificating on one's work. A bad artist's habit but one we indulge them in.

Artist's often get a free reign in things that we would never tolerate in other professions :)

Having the fear of losing power yesterday (which we never did, by the way) and watching the snow fall on the official first day of Spring made me collect up my latest purchase.

I am going bulb and seed happy this season. Having started some melons, cukes, and toms in february, I have since filled my window sills with bulbs of new hosta variety and a few ferns, including the giant elephant ferns that I love but that are quite dear to buy fully grown around here in the summer.

It is always magical watching a plant from seed or bulb. And it's the colours of the artist-gardener's pallete when painting the landscape of the garden bed.

As you can tell by this assortment of bulbs, I am doing a new garden by our front entrance using mainly blue/purple hues with touches of pink. I might put the pink in another bed and keep it mainly blue/purple with whites. I saw a lovely white peony bulb that might work for that.

I also got some wonderful purple/blue zinnia seeds and this amazing green variety, that I often love to grown. It might seem odd to grow a flower that is green, since the foliage of the garden is green, but this chartreuse is amazing with deep purples. And I am trying some blue fescue grass (which I love and it's a perennial) and as there is some shade where I am making this garden, I found this amazing shade of impatient. I don't want any red or vibrant orange in this bed (though I love those colours too) but I kind of approach flower gardening like painting and really like to play with palletes.