It's a Spring Thing

We know it's springtime in Arizona when the winds pick up. The desert palo verde tree blooms are sent every which way and the fine citizens of Phoenix are sent rushing for antihistamines.
Just about everything native to around here blooms bright yellow--the palo verdes, brittlebush, creosote--with an occasional pink thrown in for contrast.
The last thing to bloom will be the ancient ironwood trees with the palest of lavender flowers come May. They are my favorite as they signal the beginning of summer. And they're NOT yellow!
Our grapefruits are yellow with a pink blush as they are, in fact, PINK grapefruit. And our oranges are, well, ORANGE!

A Small Portion of Last Year's Crop

[Warning: this is blatant self-promotion!]
Which brings me to...the theme for this week's Two by Two challenge is: "ORANGE!"
I'm not going to cheese out and re-use an image, so this is just a tease! Please consider playing along!

Last week's IAST had an egg-shaped string in honor of Easter, but as I wrote to Adele Bruno, all I was seeing was LEMONS!

I drew [the] egg string diagonally and it turned out looking like a lemon. I put the Warped Egg in as I did and it all looked like an Angry Bird and I really had "lemon" on my mind. I still have several yet on my tree and it recently bloomed. So Mel Mel turned into a giant lemon blossom. When I started adding color pencil to it, the middle turned into a suggestion of a butterfly. I kept to a pastel palette as a nod to the Easter theme and added the yellow as I was really stuck on having a "lemon!"

IAST 137

Adele also came out with a new tangle she calls, "Citrus." Lemons, oranges and grapefruits...oh, MY! It continues the fruity theme which I used for the Diva Challenge this week. The objective from guest blogger Jane Reiter is to stack a bunch of borders around a central piece. I started with a Citrus zinchie and a whole bunch of art stuff. I was most pleased with the Sakura Glaze pen in clear drawn on black paper (the outermost border); it has great dimension but doesn't show up very well.

Citrus

Can you see the Border?

It was quite a project; the list of art stuff is long and varied and it took the better part of two days to complete. It was worth the effort and I'd do it again. The process kind of elevates the drawings to "real" artwork since it creates its own frame.

SOME of the Materials
Used in the Making of
Citrus

I took Adele's IAST for this week to good use for the twinchie challenge (and because I had a lot of my art stuff out. Still have to do the actual String Thing challenge!).

Orange you Glad?

While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I put this together for the Inchie Challenge. The EIM word of the week is "Peanuts."

That would be Charlie Brown's sweater, Lucy Van Pelt's sign, some dry roasted peanuts and Mr. Peanut going ice skating from a label for trail mix (caramels, raisins, peanuts, oh, my!).

Thanks for stopping by. I'm thrilled that you do and I'm honored for your time spent with me. I'm glad that my tutorial on composition was so well received last week--promises to become the most often read post I've written thus far! (My writing teachers would be so proud and I'm sure quite amazed).

And if you come to visit, you will most certainly leave with some citrus. It's a bumper crop of pinkies this year and plenty of oranges, too, still. Dew drop in!