Hello, my name is Ilga Jansons,
and I'm a doodle addict. Edgewood, Washington Plus

I’ve worked in the fashion industry, tested equipment for NASA, been a high school teacher and a program manager at Microsoft. I’ve also been a general contractor, an indie-dyer for wool and yarn, and designed architectural etched glass. I am currently semi-retired and rediscovering my artistic roots. I keep drawings on a Pinterest board. https://www.pinterest.com/EdgewoodGarden/ilgas-drawings/

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Ilga Jansons' Uploads

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Love dahlias, not just because they are so ornate, but also because they bloom so very late. The tuberous begonias and potted dahlias are still in full bloom at the start of November, how cool is THAT? (For the northern hemisphere and 47th parallel, no less!) This is a stylized drawing in colored pencils.

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My first ballpoint pen person. This was a lot more time consuming than I expected, but I'm glad I hung in there and finally finished it. The reference for the drawing was a Getty Image.

Annuals are encouraged to seed in the less formal beds in our large garden. We tend them, photograph them, and I draw and paint them. This is a colored pencil (Prismacolor) drawing of one of our seedling poppies. It was an odd form. Not exactly a single, nor a double and lacked the common cross markings in the throat.

I've been playing with gesture drawing of humans and animals. Here are some quick pencil sketches of horses in motiion. 2B and 6B pencils on Canson sketch pad paper.

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A colored pencil drawing of a turban squash. We made a curried squash, pear, and onion soup with it today! It was pretty while it lasted....now it's tasty!

Drawing Prompt Submission

Drawing Prompt Submission

We had our yearly meeting (via Skype this year, rather than in person) with our financial adviser. It was an hour spent drawing this giraffe during the call. She's referenced from an on-line photo.

NIghtly BIC ballpoint pen doodles while watching the news. These are drawn on light weight construction paper. The reference drawings are from the book Humans of NY.

I try to do a couple of birds a week (obviously don't post them all). This is based on an on-line photo reference drawn with a "soft" Palomino Blackwing pencil and a 4B Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Progress woodless pencil. Hence the dark velvety black.

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Drawing Prompt Submission

A very closeup drawing in 4B, 6B, 8B pencil on Fabiano hotpress Studio paper. I bought some Pitt Graphite Matt pencils and wanted to give them a maiden voyage. They are much lighter on the scale of deep blacks than I expected. More like rarified F pencils. But I like them.

Most evenings, I watch a couple of news programs streaming on my computer. During that time, I also make it a point to draw a person (usually from an on-line reference photo) with a No.2 yellow pencil (generally Ticonderoga) on whatever paper is handy on my desk. It's good practice and keeps my hands busy. These are some "News Doodles" done this past week.

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Definitely doodling---This is my first mandela and it ranged from great fun to great frustration. It ended up a little "waby swaby," but I suppose that's in keeping. It's 12 inches across with 32 points. Drawn with a micron pen, then colored in markers (in whatever colors I happened to have) and has colored pencil shadows. I scanned it into PhotoShop and played with altering colors. Made a green one for my green-crazy friend and a subdued desaturated one for myself. It's quite printable on my oversized color laser printer---so ill be a fun "social distancing" poster gift for my friends. Each one with a personal color range.

This is a graphite pencil drawing of a hunting hawk somewhat loosely based on a photo. The reference photo is from: Birds of Prey by Paul D. Frost (Paragon Books Ltd 2006) and credited to Martin B Withers/FLPA. I found the book in the Goodwill a couple of month ago and was much inspired by the beautiful photographs.

An ink octopus from a Getty photo reference.

Prismacolor pencil drawing of Primula vulgaris.

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Ball point pen drawing using a black, red, and brown pen.

After struggling with horse anatomy from photos, I finally decided to search for white horses, figuring that I would be able to see details more easily than on darker photos. It worked out well, the details were much more discernible.

Drawing Prompt Submission

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I printed my black and white zentangle drawing on marker paper and colored it with alcohol markers. At first it was a bit to garish with too much contrast, so I painted a warm grey over the whole piece. That gave me what I was looking for. Of course, THEN I completely undermined that with making a bunch of wild colored ones (two shown here) by playing with them in Photoshop. I shall be using this (along with my Zentangle koi posted la while back) for printing blank cards that we sell for charitable (mostly foodbanks) organizations.

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Ilga Jansons' Uploads