This is a prime example of a project that would never end.  It snowballed and continuously transformed into the next project.  I had taken a passing photo of a stone bridge in Mull while travelling in Scotland.  Although I quite often take photos with the intention of drawing them at a later date, this was not one of those photos.  I simply took it because I love old stone bridges.

Couple of years later, I found a watercolour painting meet in Los Angeles.  I dug through my pictures and picked out the stone bridge photo to paint from.  This was going to be a rough watercolour sketch, nothing special!

Before I worked on the watercolour sketch, I decided to make a black and white value drawing.  So one night I roughly sketched this small 3.5″ x 5″ piece.  As I was using it as a reference for my watercolour sketch, my husband saw this, a few people at the meet saw this, and everyone asked me repeatedly why I had made it so small.  I was told I should draw it much larger.  They really didn’t get the point that it was a sketch.  Couple of months ago, as I was rummaging through my little scraps for a drawing motif, my husband happened to see it again.  I was promptly reminded that I should draw a larger version of this.  So I finally did!!

All of this really started with this picture.  This was the first drawing project I worked on while attending the group.  I was playing with painting moving water on this watercolour sketch of the North Sea, from a photo I took in Scotland.  I wanted to paint another picture with water in it, that reminded me of the stone bridge picture that I had wanted to paint.  Thus the snowballing began!!

My husband also insisted that I frame this one.  He even picked out the mat board and the frame with me.  I am ready to move on from the bridge.  It is a bit ironic, isn’t it, Getting stuck on a bridge?!

I recently roped him into drawing as well.  He has his own set of tools now, so I made a little pencil case for him.  He picked out the fabric himself, he said it reminds him of fantasy stories.  The bottom and the top pieces of the zipper were the same size when I started.  I was playing with the serger and I just could not sew a straight seam that day.  So the one side kept on shrinking.  As I was thinking about starting on a new one, I finally got a straight seam at the very last moment.  It is not the original size or the look I was going for, but he really likes it.

Projects sometimes tend to take a life of their own.  What do you do?  Continue on and see where it ends up or call it a day after a certain point?

-Soma