I really got into 1930s book endpapers a couple of weeks ago. I made a few with the risograph textures I had been using for my Binky McKee patterns (above) and couldn't resist experimenting with a cut-out element from my recent drawing In No Way Pure. The result is pictured below, I had to do it by hand as I couldn't work out how to make a mechanical repeat tile (too much maths involved) but, hmm interesting!

Shortly after drawing last week's sprouting carrot tops, I drew a the core of a bell pepper. Its flesh had been cut away for a salad leaving the arched pyramid form with its bustle of seeds inside, rather like a deconstructed buttressed church sheltering a congregation. Or a big ghastly alien throat, if you prefer. It hung around in my work room and began involving itself in a most interesting process - I wouldn't say it was decomposing, because nothing went mouldy (wrong PH for mould, perhaps, a bit like sourdough culture?) - the fleshy parts just began to disappear leaving the seedball intact, I suppose by dehydration. I drew it again collapsing upon itself, pictured below.

I didn't throw it away after drawing it, I seldom do throw away these things, hence my collection of gross objects which will freak anybody out when I die and they come to empty my room. But look what it has become now. The photos below show what's left; it's the size of a conker now, and the small remaining part of the base of the pepper (right pic) has become a pretty flower. From a big, proud, glossy green fruit my bell pepper has gone to this - fascinating, as Spock would say. It actually feels nice to handle.
Oh well, I suppose it happens to us all in time!  I will get around to drawing its remains soon which will clarify what I see, something photos cannot do. And I may even experiment with growing the seeds.

Growing carrot tops in a saucer of water on the windowsill.
With everything in the world blooming, growing, seeding and dying back all at once there is so much all around to draw. I'm not sure how it works, but drawing from life especially in the summer when there is so much cyclical life of plants on display feeds into the larger drawings, where my studies become the things, or the subject matter, of the larger works.

I really enjoy drawing from life, and don't use photography to draw from if at all possible. I do use photos as a reference for my Binky McKee pattern making because the work is highly stylised and there is no need to understand spacial positions. My larger ink drawings may not appear to require spacial information, but I definitely do need it in order to get to grips with an organism and how it works. (More here on how I use photos for my Binky work).
Here is a little collection I made over the last week of things I want to draw:

A perfect haul of treasures and lots of drawing to do!