Saturday, April 5, 2008

The Multi-hued World of Nature

I did these drawings in the past couple of days, patterned variously after calendars, a magazine, and a water color book, but altered here and there as I deemed fit, dictated by my mood then.

This one is based on the cover of a St. Pete Times advertising supplement, but the floral arrangement is all mine, letting my mind speak.

This is patterned after a calendar display. Known as Yuan Yang in Chinese (Wikipedia gives the English name as Mandarin ducks), the male (Yuan) and female (Yang) are always paired. Related to the wood ducks common in US, they appear frequently in classical Chinese literature as well as legend, and are a symbol of matrimonial bliss and fidelity. Based on the usual rule in the animal kingdom that the male is more striking in hue, I would have to say that the top one is the male.

This is also based on a calendar, a parakeet.

This is Morning Glory, patterned after a drawing of Lucy Wang that appears in the Chapter on Watercolor on Rice Paper by Lucy Wang (in How to Draw and Paint Watercolors, Walter Foster Publishing, Inc., CA, 1991, pg. 121), with some variations of my own but minus the butterflies.

This is Amaryllis, from the same source as above but pg. 123.

This is pattern after the same magazine mentioned above, in an inside page, but I added the blue ribbon.

2 comments:

Lee Wei Joo said...

Just the right thing to brighten up my day.

c.y. lee said...

I like the cacophony of colors! I am not too crazy about the blue ribbon in the last picture though--actually I thought it was a river. I really like the butterfly and the parakeet.