Spring is making it’s way slowly to the Pacific Northwest. This past month has been the rainiest March on record, and my soggy garden is proof.  There is lots of color though, magnolias, camellias, daffodils and tulips all in bloom.  My blueberry plants are covered in leaf buds and my rhubarb is beautiful with it’s large curly leaves and bright red stems.

I finished up the month happily sketching the flora and fauna of the seaside. Sadly, I didn’t get to the shore this month so this helped to fill the gap! I really enjoyed the exercise and am gaining more and more confidence in my skills, which really is my goal in all of this.  Here are two more examples:

So, a few  lessons learned,

• I’m getting more and more confident in my sketching abilities’.
• I’m finding this to be not only a wonderful habit on its own, but one of mindfulness. I block out everything around me and sketch. Fifteen minutes, an hour, the time slips away.
• I love this style and using the stippling as a shading technique. I learned this way back when I studied manual cartography.
• March rains and skies are still depressing.

For those of you just joining in, I am following along with Crystal Moody’s Year of Creative Habits.  Crystal is amazing in her discipline to the project and I love her work.  You can also follow her on tumblr, twitter and Instagram.