La Datcha: illustration, photos, etc.

Time flew by these past few days and work got piled up so I only had a short afternoon on Sunday to play with the pebbles.

I would have liked to make more but after five or six it got repetitive and inspiration grew short. And I got frustrated. I am still trying not to waste any of my prrrrecious. I think I have to let go of that possessive and scared of wasting feeling to start having real fun and experiment much more. Anyway, as I have discovered, pebbles can be brought back to their original state with a good scrub!

In terms of inspiration, I first thought of prehistoric fish or creatures of the sort but instead, moose popped into my mind – it must be the Abitibian in me – and a pig. The latter is not in my usual repertoire. The moose looks just like the alien that walked us by in our driveway!

As for the medium, the creatures are mainly colour crayons with a touch of acrylic.

I realized that I feel much more comfortable using black and white. Colour still eludes me, especially with the stones since they change the colors in an unusual way: the “green” background of one the moose is in fact an ochre yellow crayon. I also prefer when a part of the stone is left untouched. Covering it all feels like losing a part of its quality; achieving some sort of transparency would be nice.

So that’s where I’m at right now. Has one of you tried interesting techniques with stones?