Yesterday Gayla and I had a rewarding day doing gardening and garden-related errands. As the weather did its current norm — leap-frogging between glorious and tragic — we cut into soil, positioned and repositioned rocks, added and moved plants, decided then undecided, and generally experimented. This is the season you can do that sort of …
I thought I would talk a bit about tools and process. For me, making these drawing is a mixed emotional and technical exercise. When I began spontaneously drawing these made up birds, I made something of a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be too precious about the tools or paper I used, and that …
A day belated simple blue bird… The birds I have posted here so far with Gayla’s invitation have been calls for Spring. As of today, while Winter’s legacy does still linger in crusty countryside ditch snowbanks and the occasional flurry of odd styrofoam-like snow pellets, many signs of Spring are happily appearing. The scents and …
Happy Friday! Say hello to another brashly tinted bird staring steadfast into the crocus-hued days of Spring. This week’s bird comes by the way of the dollar store. Looking at my friend Aaron’s sketchbook I asked him about some bright (bright!) washes of colour he had laid down and was shocked to hear he had …
I felt myself applying the colour to this bird heavily and vigorously as it came to life. I grabbed and scrubbed with the most vibrant pencils I had at hand muttering “[expletive] Winter” while trying to drive warmth into the paper. A lot of us are there right now. We understand and respect that Nature …
I kept talking Gayla’s ear off about drawing in these hardcover engineering log books I remembered from highschool physics class. Something about drawing on top of those thin blue/green grids pulled at some aesthetic urge in me. This week she found the next best thing in a thrift store, an old bound Blueline ledger. Above …
As the Vernal Equinox draws tantalizingly close, the birds can sense the coming change. Already, their calls are more raucous in the mornings — their numbers are increased on branches excited for above-zero days and equalized day and night. Where we live, we can’t really count on true Spring weather until later in April but …
Hello, and welcome to the start of something a bit different here on You Grow Girl. First off, don’t be alarmed, this is not Gayla typing these words… this is Gayla’s partner Davin. I lurk around behind the scenes most the time assisting with the design and technical upkeep of the site. Gayla has occasionally …