Debbi Friedman’s Blog

Here is the third installment, and possibly the completion of the third sunflower, of my new drawing.  (Please excuse the slightly angled aspect of the photograph.  I have a new tripod which I am learning to use). This flower took much longer to draw since it is so much larger than the other two.  I’m happy with the progress I’ve made – the drawing is starting to have a sense of the “back” lighting source, and the greens are complimenting the reds nicely.  I’m eager to make more progress and excited to be moving on to the leaves this upcoming week. 

I have finally getting back into a productive work schedule, and here is another stage of development of my new drawing.   Two of the three sunflowers are almost complete.  I added the leaves on the left for the color contrast. At this point, even with them, the drawing is very red and seems almost garish to me.  I’m hoping for the effect of a gorgeous summers day when all the green leaves, the bird and the blue sky are finished.

I’m posting the first photograph of my new drawing, inspired by my community garden.  There are so many sunflower stalks swaying in the breeze, bees and birds constant visitors.  In this drawing there will be three red sunflowers, many leaves and one bird perching among the flowers.  I often like to leave a lot of the white paper showing in my work, but in this drawing the only white paper will be where the clouds are.  Please check back for more progress.

I am very pleased to write that my blog has been awarded two different awards. First, Holly Bedrosian (www.hollybedrosian.com) nominated my blog for the Arte Y Pico Award, which is described as follows:

Arte Y Pico Award Origin

The designer of the award puts it like this: “The Arte Y Pico Award has arisen from the daily visits that I make to many blogs which nourish and enrich me with creativity. In them, I see dedication, creativity, dare, comradeship, but mainly ART, much art. I want to share this prize with all those bloggers that entertain and enrich me from day to day. Doubtless, there are many and it will be hard to pick just a few.”

The rules:

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogger community, no matter what language or country.
2. Each award should have the name of the author with a link to their blog.
3. Award winners have to post the award with the name and link to the blog of the person who awarded them.
4. Show these rules and the paragraph above explaining the award’s origination.

I also received the Brillante Weblog Award from Dee Overly (www.deeoverly.com). Thanks Dee! This award also has rules, as follows:

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to those blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.
6. Participation is entirely voluntary, of course! Have fun with this!

Now I have the tough job of finding 12 blogs to award. . . which is hard to do – I’m not sure I read that many blogs. I do have a couple of awards to bestow, and will probably do the rest at a latter date. I award the Arte Y Pico Award to: Dee Overly (www.deeoverly.com)!

Wow – that was a very unanticipated, but probably extremely predictable, break from work. I should have realized that the month of August would get out of hand with my oldest son going off to college for the first time. We drove about 2,000 miles in four days taking him and all of his belongings out to Indiana. Sorting school supplies and getting my younger son for his first day of school today seemed like a breeze in comparison, but it was very strange and a little sad not to be doing the chores for two people!

My community garden is still thriving, requiring care and nurturing my love of the lush, green summer life. Currents harvests include three types of heirloom carrots, zucchini, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, french green beans, several herbs and red raspberries. The idea for my new piece also came from the garden, and happily I was able to start on it today! Hopefully I will have some good progress this week and be able to post a working photograph of it next week. Meanwhile, I’m posting two photographs of flowers from my garden. Enjoy these precious warm summer days!