A girl and her pencils.....Bee on Lavender part 2

It's Friday! Woo hoo! Happy 4am in the morning! The weekend fast approaches and more laying flagstone for lucky me! (Actually I really do enjoy it, it is like a giant jigsaw puzzle).
The bee should be finished today. I have learned one thing, it is never as much fun drawing the same picture again! It is much harder to feel the same motivation, so I don't think I will be repeating the experiment!
I have had something on my mind about drawing all week and I thought it was time I wrote about it (I touched on it a bit in the 'I can't draw' page), but it has really become clear in my mind these past few days, that drawing is really far more about what you see than how skilful you are with a pencil. And that the fastest way to improve your art is to improve the way that you see things. I know that this sounds like stating the obvious, but you can only draw what you can see (or what you have seen - real or imaginary - and can recall to your mind). You can only add the funny little whirl of fur to the side of a cats nose, if you have seen it, you can only add the little iridescent spots of color to a dog's nose, if you have seen it, you can only draw the subtle curves of a feather if you have seen them. The more we look, the more we see. The more we see, the more we can put into our drawing to bring it alive. Really looking at things from different angles and different perspectives teaches us a lot. Changing the distance we are viewing at, changes the way we see things. For example, I have noticed that I like using my iPad to work from because I can expand and shrink my reference photo. When it is expanded, I can see far more colors and more detail, but if I shrink it down then the highlights and shadows become much clearer and I often realise that I need to increase the contrast drastically. The great thing about this, is that we can practise this at any time, whatever we are doing. Just take the time to really look.
So after that, how has my bee been going? Well, it still looks a bit scribbly after the third day but not as bad as on day 2. Although it helps having started on the flowers a little.

And on day 4 I have added more of the flower heads and a bit of contrast is coming, which is helping. Plus I decided to make the background colors a bit more vibrant than it really is. Simply because I like the colors! I think it is starting to improve. You can see that I flit about a lot, going back over areas I have already begun.

I have begun to feel quite excited about this piece, so it must be getting better. Perhaps one day I will get used to the bad stage each piece seems to go through! That is it from me for today. I just want to encourage everyone to get out their pencils and draw, because we can all do it. Enjoy your weekend wherever you are and happy drawing to you all!

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