This summer I’ve fallen in love with sketching Chantal’s flowers.  Why?  Cuz they’re beautiful, plentiful, and available.  But another reason is that they really help me hone the connection between my visual and motor cortex.  Some call this hand-eye coordination but there are no hands or eyes being trained here.  It’s all hind brain doing the work and the trick is to get this to happen without interference from the forebrain, be it left or right forebrain.  When artists say “get the brain out of the way,” this is what they mean whether they realize it or not.

Anyway, I spent a bunch of time “in the zone” drawing these black-eyed susans, locating them relative to one another.  During most of it I was “unavailable” to anyone walking by.  In the end I was both exhausted and exhilarated.  I think I got most of it right.  The leaves are not accurate.  I used lines representing some leaves to locate the flowers but otherwise the leaves were a by guess and by golly venture.  Hope you like it.