What to do with a design you love?

I love water lillys and drew out this design the other day while sitting in the doctor's waiting room.    Now the question is:  What will I do with it.  It looked great the way it was, but who wants to look at just a pencil drawing?  So, my choices were:     

1. 
   
   dye it using pysanky dyes
2. 
   
   carve it in relief
3. 
   
   paint it
4. 
   
   bead it
5. 
   
   scrimshaw

 How about doing a series and do one egg in each choice?

It may take me a while to complete the series, so keep checking in for result.  I was planning on submitting a "Mother's Day Egg" for a pysanky egg group, so I decided this would be the design to submit. 

This is an ostrich egg.  Normally, one would submerse the whole egg to complete the dying process when doing pysanky.  I decided I wanted more control on shading, so I combined the painting and dying process into one.

To decide upon the colors that I wanted to use, I took a broken piece of ostrich shell and painted small swatches on it using colors that might make good combinations.Using Colorama dyes and soft grip brushes  from PysankyUSA.com, I started painting the dye onto the Lilly.  I used #10 Cotton Candy as my base color and outlined and shadowed with #29 Raspberry.  It looks pretty flat - not dimensional, but it was time to put the flower side of it to bed and work on the leaves.  Once done with the leaves, I can go back and highlight the flower.

Ok, there are two different types of leaves on this egg:  the lilly pads and water reeds, so it is best to not use the same colors on them.  Once again, I placed color swatches on scrap shell so I could find a color combination that I liked. 

The lilly pad has a base color of #1 Shamrock and is shaded in #11 Dark Forest.  I also used #11 Dark Forest to outline the leaves.  The reeds need to be more subdued, so I chose #15 Granny Smith.  I shadowed and outlined with my all time favorite Colorama green #4 Asparagas.  I really liked the effect.

It's time to hightlight both the flowers and the leaves.  One color looks great washed over all the base colors that I've chosen.....#40 Sun Yellow.  If you look at Pink Water Lillys, you will notice that they do have yellow in them, so this seems to be a perfect match.  I posted this picture in a larger format so you can see the yellow better as photos are never the same as how the eye sees it.

The browns that I used for the spent Lilly stamen are #24 Mushroom and #25 Nubian Brown. 

I then went back over the flower and darkened my shadows more. 

The stamen is #40 Sun Yellow, with brush strokes of #33 Temple Orange.

You can see the completed work for the stamen in the larger photo.

The final colors are for the water.  This was the hardest decision, as there are some many beautiful blues, aquas, and greens in the Colorama dyes.

I headed back to my scrap shell and painted out my color swatches and decided on #3 Aquamarine and #16 Ice Blue.  I'm glad I have several different sizes of the soft grip brushes from PysankyUSA.com.  I could opt to use regular paint brushes, but feel it is best to have a separate set of brushes designated only for pysanky dyes.  These brushes are great to use!

I also used #38 Dolphin Grey to paint vein lines on the flower petals.

All in All - - I love the results.  The pictures do not show the final varnished egg.  I will post the final egg at the end of my series, with all the different lillys.

Please visit Jim's website for your pysanky, and Drop/Pull needs at

PysankyUSA.com

I thought I'd share a little silliness with you all about entering eggs in the Masters Program through the International Egg Art Guild.


This is an incomplete list of Do-s and Don'ts, Happiness and Frustrations that occur when you put alot of pressure upon yourself.  I'm sure I will add more folly later.  I can laugh about all of these now, knowing that I've learned something... .

Pysanky:
1. (FYI- I keep my wax melted in a tart warmer)....Don' t watch a suspenseful/ scary movie when doing pysanky. If you jump out of your skin, you might knock the melted wax over onto the floor where it hardens into a large black splop on your hardwood floor. (Aaargh..... ..that's the pirate in me!)
2. Always keep a pastry scraper and Goo Gone on hand. The scraper will gently scrape the wax from the floor without scratching the hardwood. Goo Gone cleans up any remaining wax and then everything looks like normal when dear Hubby walks in the door; therefore avoiding the "I told you so-s"......( hee hee)
3. When washing your eggs off that have a plug in the hole.....don' t use overly warm water. The air warms inside the egg....expanding. ......pop. .....the side blows out. (I always wanted that egg for doing a diorama instead)
4. If you have cuts on your hands, wear gloves when using vinegar or "The Works" or you will be yelling "Owie, Owie, Owie". On the good side......they won't get infected as they will be soooo clean!

Filigree:
1. If your carving area is in the garage and it's cold, cold, cold.......be sure to warm your egg before carving. Eggs shatter much easier when they are shivering. (I can use those pieces for crushed eggshell ornaments)
2. If your carving area is in the garage and it's cold, cold, cold.......be sure to warm your own body with heaters. Straight lines turn into squiggles when you are shivering. (Another diorama egg on the way!)

Decoupage:
1. Don't tell your budding artistic daughter that has just learned how to write in cursive that you have colored pencils..... .....they quickly start disappearing. But you soon have colorful "I Love You Mom" keepsakes that are worth their weight in gold.
2. Be sure to tell your budding artistic daughter that the little tiny scissors are mine and to not touch them, or you will be wasting lots of time looking for them. But you soon have colorful paper snowflakes that say "I Love You Mom" that can completely cover your refrigerator. ......... ........and lots of little tiny bits of paper in someone's bedroom that need to be vacuumed up.
3. If you want to be truly successful in creating decoupage eggs, shave your entire body, including your head, pluck all your eyelashes, and do all your decoupage in a 500 gallons size ziplock bag. Since that isn't going to happen, be sure to carefully inspect your egg before the latest layer has dried, so you can lift off that eyelash before that layer of glaze has dried.

Eggs in General:
Eggs are going to break and crack. It's Murphy's law! So, prepare yourself ahead of time and just relax and go with the flow. But, you can also avoid serious damage by not putting a whole tray of eggs on the counter just below the cupboard that has a bottle of honey that was put in there cockeyed. When you open that cupboard door, gravity can cause that honey bottle to land in such a way that every egg is broken. (Gee, I get to do more crushed eggshell ornaments!)

So, my goals today are:
1. Draw more pysanky.
2. Dig out that eyelash.
3. Warm my body and egg before attempting to go back to the garage.
4. Wash some more eggs.
5. Wear gloves