March Madness Alphabet Challenge

March 5, 2019

During the month of March I'm participating in a challenge within the Facebook group Sketching & Watercolour: Tools, Tips and Techniques. The challenge is to create a sketch each day following a prompt that is listed, generally the night before. Since sketching daily is not at all a challenge for me, I added a few personal challenges.  Each sketch must be a dala of some sort. It must be sketched in the square sketchbook I made using arches watercolor paper (instead of Rives BFK paper that I normally use when creating dalas. I must use my Superior Water Colour travel palette of 42 colours rather than my typical limited palette of  six tube paints. I'm uncomfortable with all three personal challenges.

I think today's prompt is worth sharing.  It forced me to realize that there's a part of my creative brain I've not been nurturing.  Believe it or not, I have not been nurturing my imagination!!! By that, I mean that it's been a long time since I started with one thing and transformed it into something totally different.  I've been transforming objects into different variations of the objects, bending, twisting and stretching them. I've not been turning itobjects into something totally different. 

The prompt for today is to use the first six letters of the alphabet and, one at a time, turn them into something else based not on the letter itself such as A for apple, B for berry, but solely on the shape of the letter.  I played this game with my children decades ago, drawing on the placemats when we stopped to eat while on road trips.  I haven't played it since ... until today.  I'm grateful that the internet allows artists to share ideas and inspiration so easily, encouraging us to be better and to continue to hone our skills on a daily basis.

Below are photos of the stages of today's dala  prior to adding color:

The Letter A

Becomes an apron ... but not because apron starts with "A"

Snuggled up against the apron is the letter "B"

"B" becomes to fingers

Following the dala squiggle line I make a distorted letter "C"

The letter "C" becomes an ant's eye view of a giant lady.

I draw a square around my dala and draw the letter "D".

 The letter "D" becomes a tipped wine glass.

 I add the letter "E".

The letter "e" becomes a paned window with shutters.

The last letter to add is the letter "F".

The letter "F" becomes a shelf of bottles.

Below is the final ink drawing of the transformed letters: 

A B C D E F

 And now back to the drawing board to add a bit of color. 

My brain feels a bit frazzled and my mouth is smiling.