Themes and Backgrounds...

Most artists, whatever their medium, tend, when they focus on doing one or two objects, focus just on those, such that when it comes time to consider a background - lo and behold, it is as if that just appeared, and they often flounder in figuring out what to use for one...   pen and ink artists, in general, do not fall into this as much, because they have to forethink so much of their composition...  still, there are times when perhaps not so much a lack of the background as in deciding what had been originally chosen was not the best to use, there arises the need of thinking out what, then, to use in place and how to go about deciding...   it is not a trivial matter, for much the same reason as any of the rest of the rendering - once the ink is down, it is down, and virtually immovable, so it'd be wise to know full-well what is to be done with this background...  and the usual also of how much emphasis is to be there in the background...   in the case of "Breezing Into Blooms", the original sketch revealed the idea of a rock much as a slab set - but it quickly seemed contrived, so another was considered - in this case, something more in tune with the scene to be displayed in the water drops landscape, namely the desert being transformed into a vegetative delight...  thus will be seen a sort of pile of clods of hardened dirt or comboed with sand...   this serves the primary function of setting all in a grounding, plus, as was the case with one drop seen in front of the pipe, background cover allowing reflection of the outer globularity instead of the inner [as was the case with "Clear In The Air"]...   there are, of course, other possibilities, but this seems the best at hand [others later thought of can then be used in future ones of this now series]...