Pinwheels

I did a project with one of my classes today based on a book called April Fools by Fernando Krahn. My students are making up illustrations of an April Fool's joke they played on someone. They came up with some hilarious things...Maybe I will post them on April 1st...anyway, the illustrations in the book are ink washes...and the thing that is the joke (a dragon head) is the only thing in color (throughout the whole book). I copied a student's drawing of her putting a whoopie cushion in her dad's chair and then him sitting on it...and finished it as an example with the ink washes and it turned out really cool. So I was playing around with this pinwheel drawing I did...which I started in watercolor...but quickly became frustrated with trying to show the gold metallic...and all the other colors reflected in it. It is obviously overworked...and I wanted to throw it out, but I liked the drawing so I got out my ink and tried that. I liked the ink effect much better. Anyway...this is one of those things that doesn't quite turn out the way I hoped, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway. There is no such thing as a bad mistake because we can always learn something from it that we may have never learned had we not made the mistake. I used to be so scared to mess up, so tense when I drew or painted. Drawing in my journal and doing the weekly challenges that I participate in has helped me to relax and enjoy drawing more. I accomplish more and I think my drawings have become more spontaneous and not so overworked as they used to be.