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The other day, I scored some local artichokes.
Artichokes are the lobster of vegetables. They are prickly and difficult to cook, even more difficult to eat, and so, so worth it all.
You get such a tiny amount of food for all that work, but oh my word is it heavenly.
But the plant itself is a work of art. All the symmetry, the fractal look - the STUNNING plant while it's growing, with the showy flower. I've always had a weakness for thistle-type plants. Must be my Scottish bloodline.
My friend Kathy and I have colored this artichoke stamp countless times - during the Coloring Challenge Road Trip, and on our Color & Connect Sessions. It had the characteristics we always tell people to look for in a stamp to practice and enjoy coloring with: the size of the image, the structure of the image, the opportunity for dark and light, the lack of detailed shading. It's an ideal image to practice no-line coloring, shading, blending.
Also, it's just beautiful.
I've colored it traditionally here, masking it so that I could do a little still life. That one reminded me of my annual trips to California with my dad in the summer. We always stopped in Castroville and feasted on artichokes in a million forms: fried, soup, steamed, and yes, ice cream. There's no artichoke like a Castroville artichoke.
But one night on Color & Connect, Kathy & I both decided to paint the artichoke non-traditionally. It really doesn't matter what you do with this stamp, because the structure of the image allows for so much room to move.
So I went with a rainbow. Because that's never wrong.
This is Daniel Smith Watercolor (from the Lydia Split if you're in my split group), and was so relaxing and fun to do. I used Fabriano watercolor paper. And I grabbed the beautiful thankful layered die cut from my UFO pile to finish it.
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Loveyameanitbye.
Lydia, that is so pretty!!!
ReplyDeleteFabulous water coloring girl, Love that stamp
ReplyDeleteI love all the color, perfectly done...
ReplyDeleteGreat coloring. You are so talented!
ReplyDelete