New Obsession

I have been having some trouble with impulse control lately.
About a month ago I had an hour to spare, and I had an uncontrollable urge to get a piercing in my upper ear.
I drove way out of my way, went to the mall, walked directly to the Piercing Pagoda and got it done.
It was a strange experience.

Last night I had a similarly difficult urge to deny, but since it involved no pain at all I went with it.

Again, I had a little time to kill between dinner and an event, so I popped in to my local art store.
I got some watercolor paper and a keen travel watercolor set.

Amy at angrychicken is partially to blame, since I had just read her post about botanical lettering and had art on the brain.

I decided to try out a couple of letters, and I am totally hooked.
The first one I pretty much copied from the tutorial Amy posted, since it was a J, and that's my initial. I drew the letter freehand, since I was using a watercolor pad, and the pages are glued down. I was working with a smaller piece of paper, so I compacted the design.

With Brian (my husband) I made it up, and I think it came out pretty well.

After it was finished he asked if I used plants beginning with B on purpose, but it hadn't even occurred to me, I just chose bleeding hearts because we have them in our garden, and I love my husband.

With The Elder, I went with plants that begin with A - artemesia and apple blossom.
We have an H and another A to go, I am really loving the challenge of finding plants that can work within the framework of a letter shape.

It's always been a goal of mine to be better at drawing and it was very satisfying to find a compact project with which to practice.
The life-changing part of this exercise is that I have been trying for a very long time to draw more realistic trees, and I couldn't figure out my block until I really studied some botanical art and noticed that the line should wiggle a little.
Really, I don't know if I can accurately express how this discovery made my day.
I am so pleased with how they are coming out, and I could see just doing an entire alphabet for The Younger's room.
I'll see how I feel after three more initials...


As a completely unrelated aside, did anyone else watch The Last Man on Earth? The Hubs and I just howled through the whole thing.