Blue Skies and Cloudy Skies: Skyscapes Part I

Colorado landscape photo by J.J.

Why is the sky blue? It is because of the atmosphere. If we were astronauts standing on a planet that had little or no atmosphere, we would be looking up through the face-plates of our helmets at the blackness of outer space. Instead, we are looking at that blackness through a deep layer of atmosphere. If we look sideways toward the horizon, we are looking through even more atmosphere — complete with dust, smoke, industrial haze, etc. By the time you look at the horizon, you may find that the sky has lost most of its blue and has taken on a yellowish tinge. This is most noticeable in the winter. The blue color of the sky is produced by the reflection, refraction, and scattering of light by particles and water droplets in the atmosphere. I have looked at skies on three different continents and have seen a large variety of blues. One factor in the blue of our Colorado skies is that much of the state is a mile or more above sea level. That means there is a mile less atmosphere between us and the edge of outer space.

Sky reflected in a pond, photo by J.J.

We talk about "clear blue sky" but it is not a uniform blue and it is a mistake to portray it that way. If you are simply using the sky as a background for your subject, you should still make your sky realistic Otherwise, your picture will lack depth and naturalism. The darkest blue is directly overhead and grows lighter closer to the ground. It is not enough to simply lighten the blue you used for the top of the sky.. There are different blues in the sky and you will need more than one to show it realistically — as in the picture to the right. Look at the reflection of the sky in the pond. You can see the deeper blue of the sky overhead, which is not visible in the photograph itself. Such details make a composition come to life.

Uncropped original of "Racing the Sky Dragon," photo by J.J.

You can also see this gradual change in this photograph, even though it is interrupted by clouds. You can also see that the clouds are darker on the bottom and brightest at the top. If clouds are very close to the ground, they may pick up earth tones in their bottom shadows. Notice that the clouds disappear below the ridge. You cannot see the horizon in this picture. What you see is the horizon line, which is the ridge the solitary cyclist is riding along. If your composition is primarily about the clouds, you should still put in a strip of land or sea at the bottom of the picture to emphasize the vastness of the sky. The ridge and rider do this well.

Old cabin photo by J.J.

If the subject of your picture is in the foreground, however, make the sky and clouds simple and unobtrusive, without sharp edges. They should be light in color if they are contrasted with a darker, very detailed subject like this building.  If the foreground is brightly illuminated, on the other hand, you may want to deepen the sky colors and make the edges of the clouds, as well as the shadows at their bottoms, more distinct. Try to find a pleasing balance between foreground and background.

Skyscape photo by J.J.

What are clouds and how do they form? Water evaporates from the surfaces of earth and sea and rises in the air in the form of vapor. Eventually the cooling vapor begins to condense into tiny droplets. This area is called a "ceiling' or a "condensation layer". It is here that the water droplets become visible to us as clouds. Clouds move and change shape, driven by the wind. The shapes are quite varied. If you want to use clouds in your compositions, you may want to make a collection of photographs and/or sketches of clouds for reference. There are many classifications of clouds. I will deal with the three most generalized ones.

Click here to download

These are cumulus clouds. they are most common in the summer. They are generally rounded at the top, thick, and fluffy, often piling high into the sky. They are sometimes called "fair-weather clouds", and are used in many depictions of summer scenes. This sketch is downloadable. You can use it as a background to practice your own compositions.

Clearing skies watercolor by Annake

On the other hand, cumulus clouds also form the basis for the storm clouds we call "thunderheads". Driven by strong winds, the tops — while still rounded — are more broken and the edges are less distinct. Dark gray clouds may show through the irregular edges, as well as through breaks in the clouds themselves. The column of clouds towers over the land, dimming the light below it and casting shadows on the land. The shadows at the bottoms of the clouds are a darker gray — often showing an ominous green or purple cast. Features on the ground are darker and less distinct, and may be obscured by light gray streaks of falling rain. As the storm departs, the columns of clouds break up and the sky clears from the horizon upwards.

Cirrus clouds, photo by J.J.

Cirrus clouds are less common than cumulus clouds because they form from ice crystals at very high altitudes. Sometimes they form an anvil-shaped cloud. More often they are blown by the wind into thin wispy or scarf-like layers at different elevations. They often move in different directions and at different angles.  J.J.'s photograph shows this type of pattern. She even captured the reflection of the cloud pattern on the water. The clouds form interesting patterns, but the patterns change very quickly, so they are difficult to capture. These are probably the most difficult of the kinds of clouds to portray, but they can be spectacular, particularly when they are back-lit by a rising or setting sun. Cirrus clouds in a clear blue sky almost guarantee a beautiful day. But don't get too relaxed. They signal a change in the weather usually within 12 to 24 hours — and that change is not generally for the better. If you can determine the place where the clouds originate, you will know what direction the changed weather is coming from.

Stratus clouds watercolor by Annake

The third type of cloud is a Stratus cloud. These clouds form layers at different elevations. They are formless layers of cloud with fuzzy edges. They are very slow-moving and often hover over a region for hours and even days. They look very dense, but sunlight or moonlight can sometimes shine through them or reflect off them, as you can see in the upper layers here. They are not serious storm clouds, although they may produce a drizzle or light snow. This is a picture of stratus clouds that I painted in watercolor. Their slow movement gave me time to capture the entire scene. I tend to paint what I see, even if my picture breaks some of the "rules", so you can believe that this scene was as accurate as I could make it without a camera.

If you are not already a sky-watcher, try to become one. Skies are usually most interesting in the early morning and the late evening, but unusual cloud formations can appear at any time. When you see one, try to photograph it, make a simple sketch of it, or jot down a description of it in quick phrases. Once you have collected a few, think in terms of how you could use them in simple designs or compositions. Just remember that skies with clouds are usually more interesting than those without them.

Troubled sky, photo by J.J.

Happy skies,    

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Earth Day 2019: An Open Letter from Annake, J.D., & J.J.

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Earth Day, 2019.

Annake:  In 1967 I was teaching science in a secondary school not far from Washington, D.C. I was privileged to work on a committee that developed a mandate to include the Earth Sciences — Astronomy, Geology, Meteorology and Oceanography — in science education for grade levels K through 12 all across the United States.  We also developed standards for the most important topics to be taught at the various levels. We did a massive amount of research for this project. Much of what we learned, particularly in meteorology and oceanography, we found very distressing. We agreed that much more attention needed to be paid to climate change, air pollution, water pollution, ocean pollution and vanishing species. Our program was approved. Many publishers vied to make good textbooks for the program. I still have a couple of those "first edition" textbooks.

We put the program to work the following year. Quite a number of our students were interested in the issues we raised and went on to take follow-up courses in college. A few even chose one of those fields for his or her profession. Unfortunately, not enough people listened to us or to the scientists whose work we respected and described. That was more than half a century ago. These are not new issues.

... and Oceanography

Now hardly a day passes that we don't see pictures of some large-scale disaster or hear cautions about new ones yet to come — some of them in the very near future. We assumed that the Earth had such riches that we could exploit them forever. We thought that the oceans were so huge and so deep that nothing that we did to them would make any difference. We imagined that huge numbers of species of plants and animals could go extinct and it wouldn't matter to us.  Well, we were wrong!

Kaibab Squirrel

I don't have grandchildren. If I did, I would be worried that their children would not know the beautiful creatures of the Rocky Mountain West (much less those of the rest of the world) except from the pictures that I, their great-grandmother had drawn for them. They might never know the joy of watching a young eagle swoop and dive, riding the thermals just for fun. Or see a native trout swim up through clear water to snatch a fly from the surface. Or see a family of mountain goats dash nimbly down a steep rock face. Or see Kaibab squirrels frisking along the rim of Grand Canyon.

I cannot fight on all the ecological fronts, but I have chosen to use my art, my writing, and my voice to support efforts to protect, preserve, and propagate the wonderful creatures we still have around us.  That is my Earth Day promise.

ANNAKE

Rocky Mountain Bighorn, needlepoint by Annake

J.D.:  In the early 1970’s, I spent a year taking classes on one of the University of Colorado campuses. Two courses stand out in my memory: Environmental Economics and Biogeochemical Cycles. In the first, we ran cost-benefit analyses on the pluses and minuses of various environmental policies. In the latter class we examined the interaction between all of those systems and cycles we were exposed to in high school science classes – like the Krebs cycle, or the eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity.

A half-century after completing those classes, two conclusions have stuck with me: first, when you stack simple systems one on top of the other, and then hook them together, things get very complicated and hard to predict. Second, when it comes to building, maintaining, and modifying complex systems that are robust, redundant, and efficient, Nature does an infinitely better job than humans.

So, when it came time to make an appeal to preserve and conserve the ecology of this planet and the multitude of endangered species we share it with, I decided I would simply speak to your self-interest.

Wood Frog

Amphibians — frogs, toads, and salamanders — as an order are under massive threat of extinction. Species after species are suffering huge population losses, and we don’t understand why in a lot of cases. Why should we care about a bunch of small, slimy, cold-blooded creatures? They aren’t a potential food source, they aren’t cute and cuddly, most of them aren’t even pretty. Why should we spend our limited resources on trying to save them when other things demand our immediate attention?

Many amphibians can regrow lost limbs and we don’t know yet how they do it. Researchers are racing to learn all they can before their study subjects disappear. Many species of amphibians estivate: they survive in a state of “suspended animation” through extended periods of extreme climate conditions with minimal signs of life, then miraculously emerge when conditions improve. You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far to see the medical benefits to you, personally, of being able to regrow a lost or damaged limb or survive a crisis in suspended animation.

Endangered Buckwheat

Let's consider plants. There is an extremely threatened type of wild buckwheat in western Colorado that grows in alkaline clay, a notoriously tough soil to get anything to grow in. Buckwheat is a good food plant (just try some buckwheat pancakes, they’re delicious) and this particular variety of plant has been observed hosting over fifty different pollinator species, which local crops may depend on with the spread of honeybee diseases.

Hummingbird Moth, a pollinator native to Colorado

Endangered Milk Vetch

Also in our region of the state there are two highly endangered species of milk vetch, an unlovely name for a pretty ordinary-looking plant. Vetches are members of the pea family, so they fix nitrogen in the soil to keep it fertile. One of these species also concentrates selenium in its parts. Selenium is an important micro-nutrient that is essential for people in small doses, but harmful in higher concentrations — fish from many impoundments in Colorado are inedible due to selenium from agricultural runoff. Milk vetches are members of the genus Astralagus, the same sort of plants as what’s in the herbal supplement section in your grocery store. It's been used for centuries to treat a variety of human ills. Who knows what medical benefits we might miss out on if these plants are lost.

There you have my argument for supporting endangered species preservation: no blaming, no fuzzy New Age philosophy, no moral arguments; just cold, simple logic. Your ability to grow food, treat your ills and injuries, have safe water to drink, even air to breathe, could depend on plants and animals that are close to being gone forever. We need to save these organisms and every one that we can of thousands more because our very existence may depend on them.  We don’t know nearly enough to replace them or bring them back when they’re gone.

J.D.

J.J.:  Greetings to the readers of Cuttings from Annake’s Garden.  I'm J.J. I'm so pleased to make your acquaintance. I understand that you have "met" me through some of my photographs. Thank you for your positive comments about them. Positivity is very important to me. Like Annake and J.D., I am a blogger. Since this is Earth Day, it seems like the perfect time to tell you about my work and to explain why I do it.

Meerkat

After I became discouraged with seeing all the negative posts on Facebook™, I made a commitment to share only Positive posts on my Timeline, letting it be known that my Timeline needed to be a place anyone could come to, from teen to great grandparents; knowing they would not have to see negativity, but instead be uplifted by Positive shares. That was when I created Facebook™ Critter Friends (FBCF).  ("Critter" is simply a term of endearment encompassing all animals, including our pets.) It did not start off with a bang, as it was not your typical project. It was NOT a charity, nor a fundraiser, you were NOT expected to go out and adopt a pet. In fact, you needn't even have a pet, as this was about the love of critters and the fact that anyone could participate. It confused people as they thought there must be a catch. However, the only stipulation to participate in FBCF was (and is) to change your profile picture to that of a pet or critter for one day.

Cheetah cubs

The FB Critter Friends Albums belong to everyone who has participated, by having a critter as their profile picture. Some critters are wild and funny, some are sentimental, perhaps a share of a beloved pet who has passed over the Rainbow Bridge. I've invited artists and photographers, thinking what a positive way to showcase their work. The result is not only the Critter albums, it is much, much more! We have an awesome group of loving, caring people, who may not use the same spoken language, yet understand the universal language of respect and love of our Critter Friends. If you are a positive person, who promises to share with no negativity towards animals, you are a perfect FB Critter Friend.

"Are You Nuts?", photo by J.J.

I work on many albums daily. Humans and critters are similar in surprising and wonderful ways. We have a Rainbow Bridge album where we recognize our beloved pets who have gone on before us. We have albums which show kids and critters, different species who get along just fine, older humans and critters, a black and white album, as well as a colorful critter album. There are some informative albums, fantasy albums, oceanic critters, butterflies. My favorites are the ones that make people smile.

Endangered Lemur

I do see more Positive signs in the treatment of critters and the attitudes toward them. More people than ever are concerned about endangered species all over the world. There are more and more groups working to help those displaced by natural disasters and to find them Forever Homes. Scientists are really studying how critters do the amazing things they do and are even using what they have learned to make people's lives better. For example, look at all the dogs and others that have become service animals. People pledge more money for rescue and adoption efforts. Zoos are no longer just for entertainment, but now serve as educational institutions and places where endangered species are not only protected, but also able to grow their numbers so that someday they can, hopefully,  be returned to the wild.

The goal, of course, is to teach people to love and respect critters. There is so much to learn from them.  And new species are being discovered and identified all the time. My goal is to help educate so that generations from now, the critters we learn to love will no longer make lists for endangered or extinct species. I, for one, cannot imagine a world without critters.

 J.J.

Best Wishes to all of you, for a Happy Earth Day!

Picture Credits: All needlepoint, drawings, and other artwork are by Annake (photos by J.D.);  "Geology" photo by J.D.                                   Wood Frog courtesy of National Parks Service;  Buckwheat and Milk Vetch photos courtesy of USFWS 
 All other photos by J.J.

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Creatures of Sea and Shore: Seascapes, Part V

Pelicans 3, photo by J.J.

Probably nothing increases the interest of a seascape design more than adding the image of a live sea creature to it. This may be something small like the seagull and fish I showed you in my tongue-in-cheek picture called "Seafood Surprise". It may even be as elementary as a few seabirds, each indicated by a vaguely V-shaped line. On the other hand, the animal may dominate the design, using the sea simply as background. Think of a hump-backed whale rising out of the water. In this issue, we will be featuring marine life in needle arts, art prints, and photographs, beginning with this photograph by J.J.  While these pelicans do not live in the sea, they certainly depend upon it for their survival. Their species has been sustaining itself this way for a very long time and their bodies have been modified to do so in the most efficient manner.

Tropical fish needlepoint by Annake

Fish, of course are the elemental sea creatures and come in a seemingly endless variety of shapes and colors.  The fish that live around coral reefs are especially colorful. Some, like seahorses and sea dragons, are so surprising and unlikely-looking that they seem to have been designed by Walt Disney! Others are so well camouflaged that you hardly notice them at all. If you would rather portray living animals than true seascapes, you can't go wrong with fish. They can carry a composition by themselves, with just a watery background to set the stage.

Colorful fish design for upcoming needle arts projects

Many fish are sleek and streamlined. These inspire me to do stylized and even semi-abstract designs.  This one made me think of doing a project in reverse applique because of its black over-all shape and vivid areas of color. I still intend to use the design in that way, but decided to sketch it on canvas and do it in continental stitch first. Sometime later I will cut the outline out of black felt and applique the colored areas from the back (a technique called reverse applique) vivid scraps of silk and satin. Then I will applique the whole construction onto a watery-looking fabric and frame it or make it into a pillow or wall hanging. Use these links to see a pair of these finished fish designs. [Links to the fighting fish and goldfish] We will show both styles of needlework in future posts.

Photo by J.J.

Fish are not easy to photograph in the water, but J.J. was patient and  "caught" this one lurking just under the surface.  It would be relatively easy to add one like it to either a saltwater scene or a lake shore composition.

It is easy to be interested in — and even concerned about — animals like dolphins and cuddly sea otters, but J.D. was adamant that I include some of the creatures who are far less like us, but just as interesting and beautiful in their own ways.  J.J. was able to creep up behind this little fellow while his stalked eyes were looking the other way.  Just look at the intricate construction of his body and the delicacy of his coloring. Isn't he wonderful?

Crab photo by J.J.

Sea turtle print by Annake

Here is a sketch of a sea turtle that I made long ago in the tropics and which we have made into a print. Sadly, all sea turtles are endangered now. I always thought of this one as a male, swimming through a bed of kelp and sea grass.
From the day they hatch, the males spend their entire lives at sea. The mature females travel huge distances and undergo great physical struggles to return to the beaches where they hatched and lay their eggs.

J.J. found this shy little octopus hiding in a very shallow tide pool, waiting patiently for the next tide. They can remain out of water for a surprisingly long time and even travel over land for short distances. They are very intelligent and can solve puzzles. As anyone who has tried to keep one in an aquarium can tell you, they are "escape artists" who make Harry Houdini look like an amateur!

Octopus photo by J.J.

Sea Otter

Now let's look at some of those warm-blooded sea mammals that we respond to more readily. Here are three who spend most of their time in the ocean, but come on shore occasionally to rest or to deliver and care for their babies. Who doesn't like a cuddly-looking sea otter?

Galapagos Sea Lions

This is a mother sea lion with her pup. You can tell that they are not seals because they have small external ears, while seals do not.  I wanted to use this print to make a point about horizons. When a horizon is very low, as this one is, it makes any figure in front of it — whether person, animal, or rock — look larger and more imposing. In this picture, the sea, while important to the setting, can be very simple and understated. The sea lions have very streamlined bodies and are a good choice if you are just starting to draw animals for your compositions.  Or you can easily cut out their shapes from a photograph if you prefer.

Walrus

All right, so he was grumpy and probably didn't want to pose for his portrait. Not even animals in zoos or wildlife sanctuaries always enjoy close attention from we strange two-legged creatures who want to sketch or photograph them.  Fortunately a good long lens allows one to get a good image without getting too close to the grumpy ones. I think he shows a lot of character, impressive teeth (the Inuit call walruses "tooth-walkers" because they use their tusks to haul themselves out of the water and up steep slopes), and a really great mustache!

We hope you have enjoyed this post as much as we three enjoyed putting it together for you.

This is the last article in the Seascape series, at least for now. We may ‘re-visit’ it from time to time. Look for an article on Skyscapes sometime in May.

J.D., J.J., and

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Our New Print Series: Some FAQs

Barred owl print by Annake

Hi — J.D., Annake’s Garden Gnome here. Annake is feverishly working away on at least three upcoming posts, planning for something special on the coming Earth Day, and grinding away on the final chapters of the first of several e-books we hope to publish later this year. She’s asked me to step in here to give explanations of the whys, hows, and wherefores of what we are doing with the series of prints we have been rolling out for sale. The first draft of this post was much longer than what we try to hold these posts to, so I’ve pared it down to a fairly spare set of FAQ’s.



Why are you suddenly putting all this emphasis on prints?

A number of trends and circumstances came together over the winter: an enthusiastic reception for Annake’s drawings at the late art and crafts shows last year and to their use as gifts over the holidays; a change in emphasis for Annake’s Garden, moving toward a more gallery-oriented business model; Annake’s quest for more and better studio space, and the need to cull decades worth of old notes, projects, clippings and unidentified STUFF out of the way to make room for current projects; the need to upgrade my graphics editing capabilities to meet the increasing technical requirements involved in various projects we’ve taken on; and, last but not least, a very long/cold/wet/gray winter and early spring which limited a lot of activities we usually engage in.

Why are all the prints black and white? Annake’s needlework is so colorful, I was hoping for prints that were, too…

Scan of a watercolor by Annake, not ready for printing yet

They are in the works. Our plan is to keep things as simple as possible to begin with — and color reproduction opens a whole new can of worms, so we are going to introduce color to our line slowly and carefully. Differences between types and brands of color printers, the difference between what you see on your computer monitor and what comes out of the printer, even the differences between the way different screens render colors make getting consistent quality a REALLY complicated job.

Annake is hand-tinting some new drawings for our Earth Day post. I’m going to do my best to get good electronic reproductions of those into the shop as soon as possible. Look for a few of my photos, and maybe some of J.J.’s, to show up there in the next few weeks. A lot more color is on the way, but it’s coming on baby steps.

Most of those ‘black and white’ prints we are offering are actually in gray scale, which might make a difference if your printer insists on sucking the color ink cartridges to make grays the way our HP does. I told you it was complicated.  Speaking of the complexity of doing things in color, look for Annake’s first post in her new series on using color in needle arts (and other arts) in May.

Leopard print in gray scale (left) and true black & white. We prefer the detail in gray scale.

Why so many animals, with just a few prints of people, no landscapes, no still lifes…?

A lot of the reason is just timing — it’s Spring, all the animals are coming out of hibernation, new babies are being born, new life is on peoples' minds — it’s part of our culture this time of year, and reflected in our holidays:   Easter, Arbor Day, even the relatively new addition of Earth Day. We’re just reflecting the calendar. Also, Annake is wrapping up her series of posts on landscapes and seascapes — and those final posts happened to include animals as focal points.  Plus, we have long planned something special for Earth Day (April 22), and endangered animals seems an important issue to address for that post.

One of J.J.'s many critter photos

Annake really likes doing animals (she WAS a biology major in college, after all); and my sister, J.J., who has her own addiction to cute furry things, keeps feeding the flames with torrents of emailed photos she has taken; even I have been know to take photos of animals (when I can get them to sit still long enough) so we have lots of raw materials for new posts and projects. It just makes sense to take the editing process for these a few steps further to produce something suitable for sale.

Ferret (print of pen-&-ink sketch)

Finally, we already had a lot of nearly camera-ready material to work from. Annake does a lot of preliminary sketching and plotting before she begins major needle arts projects like her “Close Encounter” series or the American wildlife set she has done (and plans more of) on canvas.  She returns to the theme of endangered species often in a number of media. Many of those preliminary drawings don't make the cut for technical reasons like the size, orientation, or materials of the final project. It’s a lot less expensive in materials and time to sort out the problems on paper than fix them halfway through a major needlework piece. If you follow this blog, you have already seen the genesis of the wolf, which became a needlepoint piece last fall, and the black-maned lion, a piece done several years ago that we revised the original plan for and made into a print. The grizzly was a sketch that didn’t quite fit for the bear-and-bumblebee piece we showed you in progress. The ferret to the left was a first sketch for the “Close Encounters” quickpoint we showed in earlier days of this blog. That needlework was one of our first sales on Etsy.

While it sometimes requires Annake to do quite a bit of extra work to make one of these drawings suitable for printing (the lion, for instance, took several days of modifications before she was satisfied with it), it 's still a lot less time and material intensive than creating a new needle artwork. We’ll be adding all the genres you mentioned above (and others) as the seasons move along — but the animals will keep coming back.

Why are you only offering one size of print? Other places online have prints of the same pictures in a variety of sizes…

Same print in three frame sizes

This is our first venture into selling print-your-own, downloadable files — we assume there are going to be bugs and glitches, so we are trying to keep things as simple as possible until we are sure the system works the way it is supposed to. Adding more choice of sizes is our first priority after that. The files we are offering will print on 8.5 x 11 inch (U.S. standard document size) paper, so they can easily be trimmed to fit any 8 x 10 inch (U.S.) picture frame, should fit most off-the-shelf commercial mattes for 11 x 14 inch frames, and will even print on A5 (UK standard) paper with a minimum of fiddling — just center the print all around. That is a pretty wide variety of choices to start with.

Why are you using .pdf files? I was expecting JPEGs or some other graphic file format…

Basically, the same answer:  to keep things as simple and predictable as possible while we iron out the wrinkles in the process. PDFs (Portable Document Files) are specifically designed to produce identical results across all platforms, regardless of operating system, hardware differences, or bandwidths; nearly everyone, everywhere has or has access to free PDF reader software; so these files will print the way they are suppose to on just about any home printer and can be handled by any commercial print shop anywhere in the world.

Boy, there sure is a difference between the styles of some of these prints… were they really done by the same artist?

Originally done as needlepoint pattern

Yes, they really were: if it has Annake’s signature, it is her original work. Please remember that these were done 1) for a wide variety of purposes: what is appropriate for planning a big needlepoint project is very different from what is useful for teaching a class of 10 year-olds; 2) made over a very broad stretch of time; and, 3) done in a variety of media. Although these versions are all for printing on digital printers, the originals were sometimes in pencil,  marker, charcoal, or pen — often on just whatever was handy at that particular time and place.

Originally done as a demonstration for elementary students, pencil versus  pen & ink

Does this mean Annake is going to stop doing needlework to concentrate on these prints?

A new needlepoint, still unframed

Oh, Good Heavens, NO! While some of these drawings were made specifically to turn into prints (mostly to fill out sets and series — Annake prefers to do things in sets), most of them are byproducts of other projects: preliminary sketches, additional illustrations to make a point in articles, examples done for teaching purposes, and sometimes just for fun. Turning them into products to sell is pretty much my responsibility while Annake pursues her next endeavors.





I hope this set of FAQs answers most of your questions about what we are doing, and why — and that you’ll take advantage of this new opportunity to own some of Annake’s original artwork, quickly and inexpensively.

J.D., Annake’s Garden Gnome, sitting in for...

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.