Mixed Media: watercolor, Prismacolor pencils, ink
Oh, come on flowers! Get your bloom on. I love picking wild flowers and those in my garden for springtime bouquets. I’m waiting and waiting for blooms! Winter lasted long this season and I’ve found only a few wildflowers so far and a handful of crocus and snow drops. Tulips and daffodils seem doubtful that the snow is truly at bay. I’m hopeful!
I have only wildflowers and no fruit trees blooming this spring so when I saw these cherry blossoms photographed by Incahootswithmuddyboots I felt inspired to give it a go at painting them with watercolor. This is my 4th completed watercolor painting and the only one that is not landscape. I made it on a small 4X4 paper. I think I’d rather go big like the kites I painted (acrylic) when I tried to imitate Georgia O’Keefe’ blooms. Did you know she painted the same subjects in many different ways for years on years? That’s the way to study technique. Check out the many cheery spring blossoms on Incahootswithmuddyboots’ post.
To celebrate May Day I searched for early Morel mushrooms. Finding none, I pulled out my little digital point and shoot camera and photographed wild flowers. People still remember the fun of making a paper basket, filling it with flowers and hanging it on someone’s door, then run like the dickens and hope they don’t find you. If found, you owe them a kiss. It’s a fun way to welcome spring.
And Old Fashioned Living recalls that Louisa May Alcott wrote about May Basket Day in New England in her 1880 children’s book Jack and Jill.
From Alcott’s story: “Such a twanging of bells and rapping of knockers; such a scampering of feet in the dark; such droll collisions as boys came racing round corners, or girls ran into one another’s arms as they crept up and down steps on the sly; such laughing, whistling, flying about of flowers and friendly feeling—it was almost a pity that May-day did not come oftener.”
Read the history of May Basket Day http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/04/30/402817821/a-forgotten-tradition-may-basket-day.
Sky Blue Daze 