About Arizona Blooms my Coloring Book

This is the front cover of my coloring book.  Pictures like these taken in my own back yard, in my neighborhood and on vacation in the mountains of northern and southern Arizona are part of what inspired me to make this coloring book.   Many people think this part of the world is brown and barren.   Every day when I walk my dog Betsy in the wash near our home nature proves that is an incorrect opinion.  When I first visited here 34 years ago I asked when I would see the real desert while driving through the desert on the way to my first visit at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.   I was amazed to hear that this green, plant and critter covered place is all the Sonoran desert.   Since then I have become a dedicated member of A. S. D. M. . I visit the museum several times a year and take classes through their Art Institute on an irregular basis.  The drawing of the pine cone in my first entry of this blog was drawn in one of their classes. 

I enjoy drawing in graphite and also colored pencil.  I plan to start experimenting with some sort of painting but don’t know when.  

The back cover of my coloring book shows the photo that was used for reference for each drawing in the book.  I plan to show you the original photo and one of my own colorings of the line drawing in the book.  One of the curiosities might be the flowers that are white….    I will show you how I dealt with it in a couple of ways.   Here is the first example:

Here is the original photo of a saguaro blossom.

I used green, yellow and red only coloring this flower.   It is a nice exercise in blending colors.

 

Until next time…..

–Cindy 

One of my Arizona Blooms Coloring book drawings

Here is one of the photos I have taken in our neighborhood and the drawing that is in coloring book.

        

Here I go!

This is a first for me.  I am going to start this blog about my art, the coloring book I’ve created and hopefully more coloring books.  

Let me start by showing the first picture I drew that was given recognition.  It showed at the Tucson Sonoran Desert Museum Gallery in one of their student shows.  Then it was chosen to show at the Tucson International Airport for about 3 months. 

Now I am trying to get the word out about the Coloring Book that I have published… Arizona Blooms.  I created line drawings of 21 of the flowers found in Arizona.  They are in a book with heavy duty paper printed only on one side.  All of the reference photos that I took are shown in full color on the back.   Soon I will have an Etsy account where anyone can buy it.