I learnt something important from my first drawing – don’t try to do two new things at one time. So I am leaving the watercolor for later and sticking to just the ink drawing today.

This is a gnarly old tree from an Unsplash copyright free photo. Drawing with ink is slower than painting, at least to begin with. What takes one pass with a loaded paintbrush takes many strokes with the pen. However, the ink drawing is finished faster – you don’t have to fiddle with colour.

Temari

I am working on a new Temari ball. It will combine traditional designs with a bit of free form embroidery. The central theme is a traditional rose shape. There will be four of them evenly spaced around the ball. The roses will be surrounded by leaves and buds done in free form embroidery.

This is the start of the ball. The guide lines that are used to construct the traditional patterns are in gold. This rose is complete, three more to go.