Collaboration 2 – The Circle of Life

The Circle of Life – Karen’s Spread Ink and Coloured Pencil

I have finished my part of Anna Warren’s book in the second collaboration that I am part of.  The theme for Anna’s book was the circle of life and, as I am in a vegetable moment, I went for the life cycle of the pumpkin.

The Circle of Life – Cover

Anna’s book is beautifully crafted , you can see that she has printed the cover and her attention to detail is fabulous, it must be all that miniature work that she does.  I wanted to snatch my book back from her so I could finish it better, but for better or worse mine is on its journeys and I won’t see it back until it is full of fabulous drawings from the others.

The Circle of Life – First Page

This is the first shared page on which I have scattered pumpkin seeds and then followed it with the image of the pumpkin flower.  Aren’t pumpkin flowers just fabulous, the colour and the shape, plus the fact they are so fragile, when they grow into such big sturdy fruit.

The last page has the pumpkin of course and although I have been buying all these weird shaped pumpkins, I went for the traditional ones.  This is taken from some I bought on the weekend which have the most wonderful pumpkin shape, but are really only tiny about 8cm tall.  I scanned the image but Anna’s delicate pencil drawing has not come up well. See the link at the bottom of the page to her blog to get some lovely images of her work.

The Circle of Life – Shared spread

This book will now wing its way across to Cathe in the states, as I await Gales to arrive here.  For those of you who want to see what the others have been doing here is the links to their posts on their blogs.

Anna Warren’s Book – Circle of Life

• Anna’s pages

Gale Everett Stahlke’s Book –  Water

• Gales pages
• Cathe’s pages

Cathe Jacobi’s Book –  Collections

• Cathe’s Pages
• Gale’s Pages 

Karen Bailey’s Book – Patterns in Nature – Forest

• Karen’s Pages
• Anna’s Pages

I cannot tell you how much we are all enjoying this and being able to share the process with each other and our blogging friends.

Karen

 

 

Patterns in Nature a new Artistic Collaboration

Patterns in Nature Journal Lichen spread Water colour pencils and ink

Here is the journal for the latest collaboration that I have entered into.  This is again with Anna Warren (see her blog here) from Sydney and two lovely American artists, Gale Stahlke (see her blog here) and Cathe Jacobi (see her blog here).  They will all be blogging about the journals they are working on as we work our way through the collaboration.

This time we decided to do things a little differently, to the other collaboration I am in.  We will be each making our own little journals, choosing our theme and doing the initial drawings, before we hand them onto the next person.  The first page will be a joint effort, then we will each do a double page spread then there will be a shared double spread and finally a little paragraph on the back page on what we did and why.

Patterns in Nature Journal Cover

So for my journal I decided on the theme Patterns in Nature – Forrest.  As most of you know who have followed me for awhile, I love patterns and in particular patterns in nature, so it seemed to be a great theme for the book and easy for each artist to interpret in their own way.  I have also been fascinated by lichens and have been meaning to do a drawing of them for ages so I narrowed the focus to patterns in the forest.

So I made the booklet out of 300g Somerset CP watercolour paper for the cover and used a lovely creamy Japon proofing paper for the interior.  I had great fun playing with the cover and used some spray inks on it, then to waterproof these I covered it with matt medium, then drew a abstract lichen/moss pattern over the top.

Patterns in Nature Journal Front group Page and inside cover

For the first page I couldn’t go past an image of a curled fern frond.  Then for my double spread I was able to play with the lichen.  I got a little carried away with this drawing and it became more complex then I wanted for this project, but hey once I got started away I went.  Very happy with this, think it could be done again in another format.  For the last spread I drew a fern frond with spores on the back.  These were all done with ink and water colour pencils.

Patterns in Nature Journal Group spread

Well I am about to post my book up to Anna for her to add her pages before it wings its away across the sea for the others to work on.  I can’t wait to see what they have done and how they made their books and out of what?  Just love these collaborations.

Karen