A few weeks ago I found my way back to getting myself out the front door for at least semi-regular walks in the sunshine. A huge improvement over no walks at all! 🙂

I’m torn about taking my phone along with me on my walks. On the one hand it makes it harder to unplug from the world for an hour or so but on the other hand it’s a good idea from a safety perspective and I also have found the camera useful on more than a few occasions.

I found the vibrant pinks and greens in this patch of flowers to be captivating.

It inspired an ink journal entry, which oddly enough was a first for me. This photo was the first time that I used something I captured/created as inspiration for a drawing.

Although I really like the loose, whimsical, unfinished nature of this entry into my ink journal, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more waiting to be created.

My youngest son is taking a design class and one of his first assignments involved using tracing paper to capture the lines from one drawing or picture and transfer them onto a piece of drawing paper. It’s kind of like making a carbon copy by hand.

When I saw what he was doing with his drawings, the idea hit me and I asked if I could use a sheet of tracing paper. Surprisingly the 4 x 6 inch ink journal entry scaled quite nicely to 8.5 x 11. It was time consuming but somewhat therapeutic to trace the lines of the petals on to the tracing paper.

Transferring the graphite from the tracing paper to the sheet of watercolor paper was downright fun!

When I lifted the tracing paper and could barely see the lines on the paper it made me a bit skeptical,

but it seemed like there was enough definition to keep on going –  so I used watercolor pencils to darken the lines and begin to add color.

I have to admit that I was surprised and delighted at how vibrant the colors became after adding water.

I spent several evenings listening to my Enya Radio station on Pandora while filling in the drawing petal by petal.

I’m a self proclaimed Geek (and proud of it) so I frequently take progress pictures when I’m working on something that evolves over several sessions.

I found it fascinating to capture the color transformation between before

and after I “watered” the flowers.

There is always that final moment, the last little bit that needs to be completed, in which I take a deep breath and hope that I don’t somehow make a mistake that will ruin the entire piece. My guess is that I’m not alone when it comes to that.

I’m happy to say that I’ve gotten pretty good at turning an “oops”  into a “happy accident” so I didn’t freak out when the final lines drawn were deep blue and not purple – somehow it works.

One of the reasons this drawing is so special to me is that it represents so many positive changes in my life over the past few years. Not the least of which is being given a second chance in life.

I also think that it’s an interesting example of how we might start out with one vision or image but along the way it morphs and evolves into something that looks nothing like the original but is equally as beautiful in it’s own way.

Life is a journey and we never know how one experience is going to influence the next one.

I hope you enjoy the time-lapse video version of the project.