cultivate your garden

this is another piece in my randomly painted and arranged composition notebook for journaling. when i'm ready to work on something, i flip through and find a page or color that inspires me and begin.

jerry and i have been spending lots of hours and money in gardening for the last few years. we are striving to get better as we get bigger. we have plenty of improvements to make, but this quote from literature came to mind. we all have "gardens" to "cultivate" regardless of what we do in life. i think this means that we can always make our lives and ourselves better and make connections where we are.

this page starts w/ a painted background, the drawing done w/ fat prang colored pencils, and then a white paint pen used to put white petals on the flowers. in this drawing, i tried to use white on the flower petals to bring out the brightness/lightness of color rather than using darker colors to focus on the darkness and shadow. this page has been sprayed w/ kumar spray fixative to protect the colored pencil from smearing. i started this picture in 10/09, but didn't complete it to my satisfaction until 6/10.