A passion for flowers - 'Passion Flowers'

Being a botanical artist I obviously have a passion for flowers as well as other botanical subjects.  Over the last few years I have concentrated on native wild plants, fungi and 'scraps of nature' as I call them.

Recently, I have been thinking about painting more exotic plants.  This motivation has come from spending time at RBGE and being fascinated by the plants in their glasshouses.  When I was there in July two Passion flowers were in bloom, and when I returned for the graduation a couple of weeks ago, another beauty was also 'showing off'.

 

Passiflora vitifolia

 

Passiflora alata x caerulea

 

 

 

Passiflora sp

 

 

Passiflora caerulea

 

 

The last two images are of a Passion flower growing in our garden.  We have totally re-landscaped our small garden, and one of the plants that I have always wanted to have is a Passion Flower.

 

I bought a small straggly specimen in the Spring and nurtured it back to health and now we have a wall completely covered with it, buds and blooms galore with just one fruit.

 

Perhaps this will have to be my next painting ?

 

 

In the meantime, I have started teaching a course and workshops at Peter Symonds College ACE in Winchester.  11 students have enrolled which is great and our first session seemed to go very well on Monday.  Teaching for just two hours each week is very different to teaching day-long workshops, but I am looking forward to enjoying the student's progression as we travel through the next 9 weeks.

 

I had finished the Quail's Eggs painting.  Some of you may have seen it on the 'Natures Details' Facebook page, but here it is again for those of you that haven't.

 

 

I now have a Facebook page devoted totally to my artwork - why not have a look ?

 

www.facebook.com/NaturesDetailsArt



 

Happy painting !

Flower, fern and ............... eggs!

A couple of weeks ago we had a relative visiting and we went to Meon Shore, which is the local beach overlooking the Solent towards the Isle of Wight.


Yellow Horned Poppy

It is the beach I go to the most, it is less built up than Lee-on-the-Solent and has a sense of wildness about it, especially in the evening and in the cooler months when it is virtually deserted.  The other bonus is that on the other side of the road bordering the beach is Titchfield Haven Nature Reserve, so there are often delights to spot there too.

The beach itself is shingle in nature and becomes more sandy when the tide is out.  I have often looked at the plants that occur along the beach and recognise some of the common species such as Sea Beet.  I have often wished that I would see one of my favourite plants - Yellow Horned Poppy.  I had seen it previously in Devon and I know it occurs further along the South coast towards Lepe.

As my cousin and I ambled along the beach at Meon there at my feet were a couple of plants of Yellow Horned Poppy.  I was thrilled to see them and to me the plant has such character, with elongated seed pods, bright yellow flowers and pale bristly leaves.  I didn't have my camera on me but above is a photograph of the said plant that I took at Slapton Sands in Devon.

Last week I spent some time at my friend's farm in Devon, near Tiverton.  When I got down there I realised how much wetter the weather had been in that part of the country.  A lot of the farmers have been affected in terms of crops and the quality of grazing for farm animals.  The vegetable garden on the farm has been affected too, with some crops not doing so well because of the damp conditions.

As usual, I went off exploring the lane next to the farm with the high hedgebanks and they were dense with foliage.  There were still a few Red campion in bloom and the Harts Tongue Ferms were pushing their way out between the other plants.  My attention was drawn to a frond that was deep under the other foliage and as I pulled it out I realised how long it was.  It was slightly darker too and not so yellowy green in colour, I presume because of the lack of light.

I decided that this was going to be my challenge for the week and I set to portraying this fine specimen onto paper.  The main colours that I used were Indanthrene blue and New Gamboge.  The left side of the frond had the sunlight shining through it and you could see the spore producing bodies through the leaf from the underside.  There were also small areas of decay that added to the character of the frond.

The finished painting

My punishment for sitting so long painting the fern, was a worsening of my neck condition, so much so that I couldn't drive myself home at the end of the week - husband to the rescue !

Now I am painting a much more manageable subject - Quail's eggs.  To me they are like little jewels, each one so different in colour and pattern.  A lovely friend who understands my need to paint 'quirky' natural subjects, gave me about 60, so I have now set to on the painting below.  The image shows the painting with the second washes on, next will be the fine details. 

Hopefully I will be able to keep the eggs intact and can create some more pictures from them.  Watch this space for progress on the painting above.

Fun with Vegetables and my Palette

Since coming home from Edinburgh I have felt really inspired and refreshed in my approach to watercolours.  I have been reviewing my palette even more (I started a few months ago) and as well as continuing to look at the transparency levels of the paints I use, I have also returned to using a restricted palette.

There were colours in the palette from the RBGE course that I liked, but there were a couple I wasn't so sure of.  Indigo (Winsor and Newton) I found particularly opaque and also very staining (Old Holland Indigo is transparent), whilst Permanent Alizarin Crimson is ok, but I really wanted to add a 'warm' red to the palette.  New Gamboge was a colour that I have liked from the course and it is a fantastic alternative to the cadmium yellows, as it is not opaque.  It is classed as a 'warm' yellow, but wasn't quite warm enough for me, so I have chosen one of my favourites, Quinacridone Gold.

So the colours that I have ended up with are all Winsor and Newton:

Permanent Rose - Cool
Perylene Maroon - Warm
Quinacridone Gold - Warm
Winsor Lemon - Cool
Indanthrene blue - Cool
French Ultramarine - Warm

I expect some of my Old Holland colours will creep in now and again, but for the moment I am really enjoying using these colours and feel that I am creating much 'fresher' washes with my new found awareness of transparency and colour temperature qualities.  Also, I will be using the colours once I start teaching again in September.  Below are the two colour wheels I created using these. 

My painting has been a bit restricted since I returned as I seem to have an ongoing neck problem, so can't sit in the same position painting for very long.  This has unfortunately meant that I have had to step away from the Seashore Life Illustration project that I was working on for the Wildlife Trust.  I really do hope that I can return to it in the future, but any comfortable painting time needs to be devoted to botanical art, as that is the main subject I will be teaching from September.

I have enjoyed working on a couple of small studies of vegetables.  I am down in Devon again on my friend's farm giving her some tuition time and have been exploring her polytunnel for little treasures to paint ! 

I painted the chilli first and tried desperately to maintain the highlights.  I persevered with it and didn't seem to lose them too much.  When I first put on the washes the white spaces for the highlights seem so severe and stark, it takes time to develop the painting and stepping away from it is always a good idea - bad neck or not !

The Borlotti beans were great fun to do.  I had always wanted to paint these beans after seeing them in Billy Showell's book (Fruit and Vegetable Portraits).  These specimens were not yet fully grown, but they still had the familiar variegated pattern over the green.  I used a lovely blue that I find creates some great realistic greens - Indanthrene blue and Winsor lemon for the green and used Permanent Rose for the patterning.

Base washes to add tone and form

The finished painting

Home from Edinburgh and garden bat-watching !

The RBGE Cert in Botanical Illustration finished last Friday and I got back to good old Southampton on Saturday.

I would be lying if I said that I did not miss Edinburgh, or rather studying at the Botanics.  I gained so much from being with other artists (whatever level of experience) and just to be somewhere with so much history and opportunity for inspiration and reference was really valuable.

A florilegium from 1630

One of the highlights for me at the end of the first week was to see two Florilegiums.  One dating from the early 1600's and the other one from the present day - The Highgrove Florilegium.  The latter consisted of two volumes that included illustrations of the plants and flowers found growing in the garden of Prince Charles' home in Gloucestershire.  I had previously heard so much about this and had been longing to see some of the work in one form or another, and I certainly was not disappointed.  The reproduction and print quality  of the artwork was excellent. 

Viewing a volume of the Highgrove Florilegium

Back to the course.  At the end of our first week we were given our plant to look after during the weekend and if we wanted to, to start making some preparatory measured drawings.  We had 1 week to work on the final assessment piece, with the main composition being decided on the Monday. 

I must admit when I heard that the plant species we were all going to have was Cyclamen Persicum, my heart sank - it is not one of my favourite plants!  After the initial negative feelings I realised that we needed a plant that had plenty of subject matter, was not going to die on us during the week and also a plant that artists of any level of experience could illustrate.

We used all of the skills that we had practised and gained during the first week to complete this picture and we had a criteria to adhere to.  We had to illustrate a flower and the front and back of leaves.  Anything in addition was up to us.  The part of the planning process that I really did enjoy was making individual drawings, tracing them and then using the tracings on the lightbox to come up with an effective and viable composition.
I have not been a fan of tracing in the past as I feel you can sometimes lose the 'crispness' of the drawing.   I am an artist that likes to live dangerously and nine times out of ten I do draw my subject directly on to the watercolour paper !

I am including a few photos below, I'm afriad that there are too many to show them all, but I hope this will give you some idea of how the painting progressed.

Making a start

Stems completed - now onto the leaves

The leaves finished

Cross-section and fruit

Cross-section

Close-up of bud

The finished painting - Cyclamen Persicum

As I speak the portfolio and painting are being marked in Edinburgh, so hopefully by next week I should know how I did.

And now for bat news !

I had noticed that when I returned home we had some bat droppings on patio in a small area.  I wondered whether there were any bats roosting between the guttering and fascia board.  There was only one thing to do - get the bat detector out !

The droppings looked like Pipistrelle droppings, so we sat out just after sunset last night with the bat detector set at around the right frequency for Common Pipistrelles.  We had a few quiet passes of this species following the tree line behind our house, and then we had a really strong sound of Common Pipistrelle that must have emerged from near the place that I had originally thought they or it may have been roosting. 

This morning there were not any fresh bat droppings, but as the males can be quite transient in the summer months, we may only be providing a temporary roost.

There is something quite comforting about sitting out in your own back garden under a blanket and eating chocolate whilst listening for bats - a bit different from the bat surveys I used to do !

RBGE Certificate of Botanical Illustration - end of Week 1

Well, where has this last week gone?  I arrived in Edinburgh last Saturday, feeling some trepidation but also excitement as I made my way to the family I am staying with.

Sunday gave me the chance to explore some of the centre of Edinburgh, but inevitably I made my way to the Royal Botanic Gardens, not able to wait any longer and wanting to see where I would be spending the next two weeks painting / studying. 

I was definately not disappointed as I walked through the gardens.  I was immediately drawn to the glasshouses that have evolved over several eras.  It was like walking into a sweetshop with so many beautiful botanical specimens.  My favourite has to be the glasshouse where the Waterlillies were - spectacular is not the word !

Back to the main reason for coming here, the Certificate in Botanical Illustration.  I have been wanting to return more to botanical illustration for a long time, after all that is the area of art that I started painting in many years ago.  In recent years I have been concentrating more on general natural history illustration and print-making. 

It can be difficult as an artist with some experience to find a suitable course to re-tune our skills.  We should not sit back and just presume we can paint and will carry on doing so at the same level of quality.  I was drawn to the RBGE because of my previous working background in ecology and botany and wanted a botanical illsutration course with an organisation where this was their main working ethos.  The certificate course has enabled me to dip my toe in the water gradually, and I must admit now my toe wants to go deeper and I would love to study for the RBGE Diploma.

The course has taken us back to basics and the students include individuals at all levels.  Exercises have included creating simple line drawings, measuring plant specimens accurately, using the tracing process, studying tone and leading onto the use of paint colours.

Pear tonal study - graphite pencil

Pear tonal study - monochrome paint

Pear - painted study

Colour tests for Pear study

We have been using a limited palette of Winsor and Newton watercolour paints - Perm. Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Rose, Indigo, French Ultramarine, Winsor Lemon and New Gamboge.  Using a palette such as this certainly makes you realise how many additional colours and tones can be created with these few initial paints.

All of the exercises are leading to us creating a plant portrait using all of the methods we have learnt so far and this will take most of next week to complete.  As well as that we have to compile a portfolio as we progress through the course and both of these are assessed to give us our final grade.

Hopefully there will be sometime this weekend to explore more of Edinburgh !



Lino-prints and then off to Edinburgh !

This time last week I was busy setting up for the second lino-print workshop for the Society of Floral Painters.  I have now tutored the two workshops and the interest seems to be going from strength to strength, with a third one having been booked for 2013 !

As usual we had great fun and most of the students had come to the first one, so they were coming with new ideas and were more confident (at least that is what I would hope !)  I also had several new students, who were soon less tense and getting used to this new medium for them.

More of the workshop images can be seen on the SFP blog: http://society-of-floral-painters.blogspot.co.uk/

My demonstration piece was a multi-layered lino-cut which I had been working on for a while.  With the help of a factsheet from the Printmaker Laura Boswell, http://www.lauraboswell.co.uk/ , I made a form of registration device to ensure that each layer was aligned with the one before.  I have only taken two prints from the cuts at the moment, as I want to improve an area of the design so that it shows up a bit more (the egg case cluster in the corner).

Printing the first layer using the registration device

The original design incorporating seaweed, mussel shell, mermaid's purse, egg case cluster and

wire- weed

The final lino-cut, there were three in total

I will have to return to this lino-cut design at a later date, as tomorrow I am off to Edinburgh and from next Monday I will be taking part in the Certificate in Botanical Illustration Course at the Royal Botanic Gardens.  I am very excited and nervous at the same time.  The course is for two weeks in total and I imagine it will be pretty intense.  One thing I am really looking forward to is to have two weeks of a complete focus on botanical art and hopefully 're-tune' my botanical illustration skills.  After all, that is where my passion in portraying the natural world began many years ago !

Happy painting and I will try and post whilst I am up in Edinburgh :)



Seashore Life Illustration Project with the Hants & IOW Wildlife Trust

There is a new 'page' that has been added to this blog which will show artwork that I am producing for the Marine Team at the Hampshire and IOW Wildlife Trust.

The project will be ongoing and will run alongside my other artwork and teaching committments, but it will be really exciting to be involved in another project with the Trust, after the success of the Swanwick Lakes Artist in Residence Project in 2010-2011.

Please click on the page tab above for further information about the project and to view the artwork being produced.

Happy Painting !