Something prickly, first of the day, colour and home

Week 1 of my Summer Nature Scavenger Hunt art challenge

As I started looking for different objects and creatures to respond to my Summer Nature Scavenger Hunt, I decided that although my initial challenge to myself had been about creating art outdoors, I was actually more excited about the possibility of using as many different art materials and techniques as possible over my 24 squares - which will hopefully give you lots of ideas for different approaches you could take, too!

Here are my first four completed squares for the challenge: something prickly, first of the day, colour and home.

First of the day - a goldfinch scribble sketch

I’d already decided that I was going to use the patch of thistles in our garden for the ‘something prickly’ prompt, when first thing this morning I noticed that they were literally covered in goldfinch! Did you know that the collective noun for any group of finches is ‘a charm’? I just love this fact - they are indeed charming birds!

For my first square, I decided that I would do a ‘scribble’ drawing - literally using a pen in scribbling motions to create the shape of what I was attempting to sketch. I always lay down a rough pencil outline first - but if you’re brave you can just go for it and have fun scribbling!

I videoed this process as I went along so you could see how the sketch takes shape (apologies for the wobble - clearly my scribbling was moving the table more than my camera could cope with!)

As I was sketching a goldfinch (from a still photo, but you can do this process relatively easily from life) I decided I also wanted to add a bit of colour so I used some watercolour pencils in the same scribbly technique just to suggest where the different colours were on the bird.

Something prickly - a thistle paper collage

We’ve a patch of common (or Scottish) thistles in one of the wild areas of our garden, which I just love. I thought that this flower would be perfect for something prickly and I decided I’d try a paper collage (I’ve not done many of these, which added to the fun!)

First I sketched the general shape of my flower, before using tracing paper and a craft knife to cut out the various shapes I was going to need to act as a template. Using tracing paper means that you can keep using the same base sketch, so that you’re sure your elements will fit together at the end. I then flicked through a couple of magazines that I had lying around to find different shades and textures of green and purple, before drawing the shapes and cutting them out.

Finally, I stuck everything together - et voila! It is by no means perfect, but it was great fun to do, so who cares?!

Colour - a poppy stencil

There’s nothing brighter and more colourful than a sea of wild red poppies in field margins and verges at the time of year, when most of the colour has leached from the landscape. So I knew that for my ‘colour’ prompt I wanted to create a poppy. I decided to make this a stencilled design, using acrylic paint.

I again sketched out the elements for my stencil and then used tracing paper to draw and then cut-out the stencil shapes. I used crimson red and sap green acrylic paint, applied to the stencil with a small sponge. Once the paint was dry, I added the small stamen details with a black fineliner pen.

Home - a charcoal shell drawing

This little shell is a beach find that I have sketched and painted a number of times, so I thought this time I’d attempt a charcoal drawing (another material I use very infrequently).

I laid down a faint pencil outline of the shell and then alternated between using my stick of willow charcoal to create the darks and a small piece of putty rubber to pull out the highlights and detail. I’m quite pleased with how this one has come out and it was a very relaxing process to add charcoal and then gently remove bits until I had a result that I was happy with.

Final thoughts

My initial thought with making my square cards 4cmx4cm was that the small size would be a benefit because trying to fill it wouldn’t be too daunting. I’ve since discovered that an added benefit is that, because the squares are so small, I’m not getting too worked up about my finished pieces needing to be perfect. With some of the techniques I’ve used this week it was pretty tricky to get things to look exactly how I wanted them to - so this has also been a great exercise in ‘letting go’ of perfection and too much detail.

How did you get on? Have you filled any of your squares?

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You can find out more about my Summer Nature Scavenger Hunt Art Challenge (and download your own grid) in this post: