Some more Drawing Lab

Despite my little artsy ebbing I have done a couple of drawings from the Drawing Lab book by Carla Sonheim in the past week. And since they were all about the imagination I had some fun with them too. See, I haven't lost all my artsy enjoyment! ;-)

Let's start with Lab 34. Now this was a cool one. You had to randomly pick two numbers and those numbers corresponded with two things you had to combine together in a drawing. My two things were: a rabbit and sunglasses. Odd combination? You bet!

Lab 34 - Numbers game

I decided on Blind Beggar Bunny! He needs to protect his eyes with big sunglasses and he's in desperate need of friendly donations of passers by. Later on I thought that I could have made a really cool bunny too like FBI Bunny of Men in Black Bunny, you know with a broad shouldered black suit and very smooth sunglasses. I may still draw that some day!

Lab 35 was another chance at being silly (let's face it, Carla's book excells in silly exercises). You had to combine collage with a drawing. In itself not necessarily funny, but I happened on two different bird images and decided to make this:

Lab 35 - Collage

I turned the big standing bird into a really strange one with a human face and a golden hand for a wing. Of course the other birds would start gossiping about that. I bet right after that they said something like "Who does she think she is?". Pesky birds!

The last lab I've done so far was difficult for me even though in itself it was a fun exercise. You had to invent machines. There were some pretty cool examples in the book, but I just don't seem to have that insight into machinerie somehow. Still I came up with three machines that might come in handy.

Lab 36 - Machines

The first one is my favorite. It's a mechanical tree hugger! You know, for those lonely trees in your garden that just don't get enough attention? On the right of the page you see some notes I wrote to come up with my machines.

Here's the other two:

Lab 36 - Machines

On the left you see a mechanical botanist. For those of us who don't have the time, but would still like to start a beautiful collection of dried flowers and plants.
On the right is a very practical instrument that I call the china breaker. That's for all the ugly unused dishes and cups and other china you have lying around that you actually want to replace with something new, but you feel bad about it, cause hey, it's still good and you got it at your wedding or something. Now you can honestly say you broke it all and it just had to be replaced!

I really like all these exercises that make you have to go an extra mile to think up something yourself instead of just imitating other people's art or drawing from life (no matter how challenging the latter can be). I had no idea I could think up these funny things. I don't know if they are good drawings, but I like the ideas I came up with anyway.

On a final note I want to thank everyone who has been supportive of my little artsy down time feeling. I really appreciate your words and kindness. I'm feeling a bit more into it all already and I have decided to try some new things and put my current projects aside for a while just to take a breather. I'm going to try to learn zentangles (I even bought some books about it) and I'm going to try to learn to work with colored pencil as a medium (just because I want to). I think I will enjoy learning something new and then I will gradually get back into the groove of mixed media art. It will all work out!

Wishing you all a wonderful artsy weekend!