It's Papergirl time again ...

Yes, it's that time again ... time to create something interesting to give away to complete strangers on the street. After mulling over no less than 5 different ideas in my journal, I found myself drawn back (pardon the pun) to these organic plant-type thingies I've been creating lately. They popped up last month just in time to become Artist Trading Cards (see my post on the Vancouver ATC blog if you want the whole story) and I guess I'm not done with them yet. Pictured below are two incarnations they've had lately ... first as ATCs (as mentioned) and since I had some left over after our ATC session, the leftovers are being turned into book covers that I can give away as part of Michael DeMeng's Art Abandonment project.

For the Papergirl project I'm all about quantity (share the love, right?) ... so my plan was to create a simple black and white artwork and then print a 100 or so of them for Papergirl Vancouver to distribute. I love organizing things on a grid, so I made 4 variations of each of the 4 designs, drawn on text pages from an interesting (and damaged) German book I found years ago.

Here's the full grid of drawings ... I'm calling it Botanical Studies, but that might be a bit of leap, since it's more like Botanical Imaginings, what with me not actually looking at anything while I drew them. I'm terribly terribly tempted to paint one panel on each print when they're printed ... but there's something simple and beautiful in the black and white by itself, and what with the time crunch ~ the deadline for Papergirl submissions is July 18 ~ I may leave them as they are ... any thoughts?

The funny thing is that I was completely unable to decide between my 5 other ideas ... all very interesting and they may see the light of day some other day, but when these popped back into my head this morning I knew where I was headed, and I had the whole thing completed before lunch. Oh, and in case you were wondering what I did last year for Papergirl ... here's a little reminder.