River Bloom

I really should have thought of better titles for these; I didn't just want to call them "The Tea One" and so forth, but however loud the "Ughs" and "Blechs" escaping your lips are, let me tell you how this one started out as:

Before I added the "water" and turned this into more of a collage work, I was going to follow my own advice in the video [link] and do some sort of calligraphy for this. When I decided to use the flower (cut from a very, very early exercise in watercolor--note the awkward perspective on the pedals and cautious avoidance of the lines by the brush), I couldn't get that phrase, "With every seed, there's the promise of a flower" out of my head, so the title was originally going to be "With Every Seed" and have the rest of the phrase or some variant penned on the paper above the blossom.

Though it is a genuinely poignant and beautiful proverb (in fact, one of my cousins has it as a tattoo), it was just too contrived for me. Besides, my skill with the dip pen leaves much to be desired, skill among them.

I was going to use this "water" element for something else, but decided on using it here. You can probably guess what it is, but in case you haven't and still don't recognize it, here's a hint: [link]

That's the last of the stained squares.