Variations On A Theme

For days six and seven of Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Drawing, I've used the same inspiration piece.  The short story is that every Thursday my friend Rita and I try to meet for coffee and drawing, and last Thursday, Rita was drawing an owl that I fell in love with.  You can click HERE to see Rita's owl.  Her inspiration was an artificial sweetener ad from a magazine.  When she finished, and I continued to "Ooooh" and "Ahhhh" over her drawing, she handed me the ad and said, "Take it home with you and do it yourself.  Just be sure to bring it back with you next week.  It will be fun to see the differences in our drawings."  It sounded like a great idea to me, so I started playing around with it on day six, and here's what I came up with:

 

Techinically, he isn't finished, but I might just leave him as is.  I'm really happy with the way he's peeking out from the spine of my art journal/sketchbook.

I decided to take the process a little further today.  You can click HERE to see my Day Seven drawing.  Since it's a mandala, I posted it to ArtiphyTheSoul.  Amazing what all can be done with variations on a theme, and I'm ready to take this even further and use it in other ways, as well.  Maybe experiment with the general patterns using other colors, added textures and different subject matter. 

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And for those of you who are interested, I posted a commentary on artistic productivity to ArtiPhacts today.  You can read it by clicking HERE.

Comments

[Rita Ackerman]

I love your owl and the mandala type variation on the other blog. I've been working on my owl and posted him on my blog with a link back to here.
I haven't decided on color.
http://www.tatteredpast.blogspot.com

[Rosie]

What a great little character he is! I have always enjoyed your flair for pattern and colours - he's really quite subtle, isn't he?!
Keep up the inspiring work... and again I must tell you how lucky you are to have a friend to make art with! =)

[Joanne Thime Huffman]

I really like your owl and the mandala that's a spin off (sorry for the pun). Great palette on both of them.