Rough of final image

Live Green, Love Green, Think Green

We were asked to produce five A3 roughs for a poster, my title being 'Live Green, Love Green, Think Green'. I started out by looking through my sketchbooks to see what nature drawings I had, or anything that's associated with green. Birds seemed to be the overiding theme so I used sketches I'd done previously and drew from them to create a context in which my phrase would be suitable.
My ideas are subtle, there is nothing particualy outstanding within them, nothing that would utterly convince you to be green, I don't suppose I'm clever enough for that. I just thought that the simplicity they hold would make them stand out at a glance, so the mesage is being put across fairly rapidly.
Not sure which to go with yet, obviously whichever it is will need more work, although I do like the idea of using the black paper to create shapes. This will be particulary useful when the image is blown up full scale because it won't lose much detail, and the blocks of black will provide a reasonable amount of contrast with the white to make it a bold image.

Mushroom drawings

Part of the collection project. I started doing some drawing from pictures in books (not shown) but Ann advised me to go out and do some drawing in situ. Found it so much more exciting, I created shapes and colours that were unexpected and organic. Here are my first few attempts, drawn on location in Epping forest. Want to look at an artist that deals with nature in a kind of free and natural way, for inspiration, any suggestions?
Working with watercolours was a quick and easy way of applying colour to a large area, but when I got home I was glad of being able to use a wider range of materials such as ink to create a more intense line and shadow. Although I suppose the shadows weren't particularly strong when the mushrooms where in their natural habitat, under a desk light it's perhaps more prominent so wouldn't need to be represented with such harsh materials when I was actually in the forest.
I think the image that worked the most successfully is the second up from this description on the right hand side of the page. I particularly like this drawing because it gives me a sense of where the mushrooms where growing in relation to one another, I remember seeing them in sprouting in a way which gave a sense of space between each growth and wanted to represent that in a drawing, so continuous line was my choice, to show a flow between the forms.

Some quick drawings at Pat's house

A few nice mushrooms

We're given a collections project, to produce fifty drawings of collected items. I decided to start a mushroom collection after our visit to Epping forest, here's a few pictures I took to get me started.