when an idea comes to light

so! a new blog design! isnt it looovely! thank you to Sneaky Foxeh for the wonderful job you did making my blog oh so shiney new and beautiful ^^

 tonight, in this dreary dark rain, i thought it was time to sketch up a new painting - a larger one with perhaps quite a few details in it. something feminine and gentle.
since i love japanese anime but havent done a more "grown up" piece since blueberry tree i thought id roll with that sortve an idea

sketchy sketchy good

okay so thats quite messy but i didnt think about getting reference material until AFTER i made the sketch :P now that explain, that lovely lady in the kimono is holding a cherry blossom, from the tree next to her, leaning over the pond with the koi fish in it, surrounded by bamboo with a japanese pagoda in the background...lol
i think that about covers it.
as for reference material heres what ill really be pulling ideas from later:

even has appropriate colors hmm?

heres a proper pagoda. not the crazy thing i sketched a few minutes earlier :P

i have a thing for small delicate birds. i was hoping to make a pattern similar to this on her kimono, maybe egg blue in color over all...what do you think?

now thats a tree

as for the cherry tree and the bamboo i have plenty of that in my garden. we have a very large cherry tree (though not flowering atm, i took the photo shown above in may) and have a mass of bamboo which is really flurishing atm - some almost 3 meters this year!
so once it stops raining ill be sure to pick out some of my favorites and get some good reference material there.
i luckily have some larger canvases lying about in the house - so i could start work on that whenever i want/am ready :P
i think itll be a great summer vacation project, ill be sure to let you know how it comes along ^^

p.s. heres me at the thai restaurant we ate at tonight, we got purple flowers in all our glasses, was lovely