Summer Creative Retreat: Pebbles and Petals

Back in 2022, I participated in an online art workshop called Sketchbook Party, hosted by The Pigeon Letters. I took 16 classes and had a fantastic time. Most of the classes were WAY outside my comfort zone (that's a good thing!) and I learned so much. 

The Pigeon Letters is currently hosting Summer Creative Retreat, a week packed with 60 live art workshops. I'm far too busy to take 60 classes in one week, or even 16, like I did last time. Instead, I started with just one class that looked fun and was as far outside my comfort zone as possible. I chose Pebbles & Petals by Esté MacLeod. MacLeod is a textile and surface pattern designer whose paintings appear on wallpaper, fabrics, homeware, puzzles, stationery, and much more. Her class focused on the idea of using pebbles and water soluble pencils to create a colorful flower. 

Here is the project MacLeod created during the session. 

And here is mine. 

We started by picking out a narrow palette of colors. I chose four of my Stabilo pencils: pink, purple, orange, and yellow. Then we placed a pebble on a piece of watercolor paper and used one of the pencils to push it around. (MacLeod used real rocks; I used glass ones.) By holding the pencil overhand, I was pushing instead of doing controlled drawing. We repeated the process with each of the colors, using a different size and shape pebble for each. 

Then we went in with a paintbrush to activate the colors.

I didn't get photos of my next steps because I ran out of daylight, but it's pretty easy to explain. I used my darkest color to trace large shapes around the pebbles in order to form petals. Then we used black to define the edges and add depth. We added more of the original colors to the petals and then accented them with dots and other interesting marks. 

I don't love my finished project, but I sure had fun making it! I'm calling that a win.