Arum

I found some drawings last week in an "old" sketchbook. Amongst them was this sketch of an Arum italicum. I made this drawing in October or November last year. This is the moment the Arum makes new foliage. The entire winter it stays green and in the end of spring, beginning of the summer there are huge "flowers" hidden between the leaves. At the end of the summer and in the autumn, the foliage dies and the cones (first hidden inside the flowers) are covered with large orange berries. It is not a very healthy plant (poisonous) but it's very beautiful and interesting all year round.
My idea is to make a drawing of this plant in all these stages. So here's the rhizome and a fresh young leaf. Next I want to draw the flower and finally the orange cone. Not very original I know, there have been hundreds of artists before me that did the same thing. But I just love this plant.

Foot

Last week I started to draw in my new sketchbook. After some weeks of pain in my wrist, I am very happy to say, the pain is almost gone. Of course I can't do everything yet, and some sudden moves still hurt but, most of the time, the wrist is painless. I still can't bend it very well though and that's the reason why I'm not touching my coloured pencils just yet.
This week however, I did my first drawings with graphite pencils. First I made a drawing of Bertus. I made it from a photo. Normally I don't work from photos but Bertus just can't keep still (and I really doubt if he ever will). It is Bertus playing on the beach of Schiermonnikoog last summer. His first time he saw the beach and the sea.

The next drawing I made was a botanical one. Small, but nice. It is a branch from the Climbing Hydrangea next too our front door. It really isn't big....

And yesterday evening I decided to draw my foot. On Flickr there are a lot of people now uploading self portraits. Very nice.... but I am just so scared of drawing my face. I know it will frustrate me enormously. It will drive me absolutely mad.... So this is my self portrait. My foot. And so I started to draw my right foot. I had never made a drawing of my foot before and frankly I thought it would end up in the dust bin. But it didn't. It actually went really well. And after sketching my foot I sketched my ankle, also good enough.... So I sketched some more, calf, knee, thighs... stop... hold on.... Thighs????? Oops, that was a lot of foot!!!!! I just didn't know where to stop. Lucky for me and the rest of the world, the paper stopped before I could. So the thighs is the end of the foot drawing.
Anyway.... I am pretty pleased with this first drawing of my "foot" ;-)

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