Back to School

I feel as though I am headed back to school today.  Summer is winding down, and I’m eager to end the three month hiatus from my work.  It has been a crazy busy summer for my family . . . a pivot point in time when everything that was is no longer.  We are in flux, as they say.  So many balls in the air I have ceased to count them.  But change is a very good thing and reminds us that we are living beings in a dynamic world.  And for that reminder I am grateful.

Although I don't have much art to show for my summer, I do want to share an experience I had, the feast for the eyes that is South America.  Peter and I traveled there for a month at the beginning of the summer.  I was tagging along on a fascinating journey with his graduate commerce students, who were studying the emerging markets of the region.  I had hoped to have more time to sneak off to draw the interesting things I saw.  But to tell the truth, I was so interested in the things they were doing I mostly kept to their schedule and had fun taking pictures, instead.  Here are some of my favorite images from the trip:

Really, I can't believe I was there.  It is so very different.  The ancient cultures are still there, sticking up out of the ground or staring you in the eye.  And yet the modern world has found its way there as well.  Each country seems to be rushing as fast a possible towards prosperity yet taking different routes there.  What an adventure!

And now back to the adventures awaiting me at my long neglected drawing table!  Hope you'll stick with me for the journey!

Fraser's sedge marathon

I sat down Monday morning at 9:00 to see if I could finish this drawing in one day.  Hmmm.  That was 16 hours ago.  I don't think I've ever worked so long in one stretch before!  For the most part, fun.  Am I done yet?  Well, I am pretty darn close and I'm needing to call it a day.  In fact, I can hardly string a sentence together, but I have pictures to show my progress.  I took a photo roughly every hour or two.  In my next post I will give a better account of where things stand.  For now, enjoy the show!

Mother's Day Bliss

I am here.  I am working.  I have not given up on this monstrous project.  I admit it... this one has nearly stumped me to the point of losing sleep.  My deadline is 72 hours away and I am entering panic mode -- almost.  How can one paint or draw a whiter than white flower on white paper, when there is no possibility of darkening the whites (since the flower is just a puff of filaments, like a sparkler)???  I thought of painting it.  I thought of drawing it in graphite.  I finally decided to work it in colored pencil.  On drafting film.  Here's the theory: colored pencil is prettier than graphite but not as time consuming as watercolor.  And the film takes the colored pencil strokes so easily, with the added benefit that it is erasable, where paper is not.  Turns out this is a key feature of the project, since I seem to be erasing more than I am drawing!

Thus far, I have worked on 8 leaves of the clump.  But I have redrawn three of them at least twice.  I could be done by now!  The tricky thing with drawing on film is that it can only hold just so much pigment, and then it becomes saturated.  No matter how much you scribble away on it, nothing more will go down and you start to get an unfortunate sheen sitting on top of the picture.  So you have to be very judicious applying the pencil layers.  It takes about four passes and that's it.  First I've drawn each leaf with an undertone of Tuscan red.  This establishes the basic form of the leaf.  On top, I'm adding an olive green, a chartreuse and a dark green.  Period.  Here's a close up of the first layer of the next leaf I'm working on:

I have a few leaves to tuck in the back of the clump.  Then I will tackle the flower stalks.  I have a brilliant (or maybe idiotic) idea of a way to offset the flowers.  Stay tuned!

Before I sign off, I just have to give a shout out to my kids, who gathered last night to prepare me an early Mother's Day feast.  This was the first time in six years that we've all been together for a Mother's Day celebration.  And I have to say, there has been considerable improvement in the last six years in culinary skills.  They could open a restaurant; I'm not kidding.  Happy cooks.  Happy kids.  Happy mom and dad.  Thank you!!

Pausing for a moment

Ah, too much to do and too little time.  Not enough drawing this week!  So I was walking by my forlorn, sadly neglected fraser's sedge specimen today and stopped dead in my tracks when I noticed this:

Do you see it??  A baby flower stalk!!!!

There it is, just peeping up above the unfurling leaf.  It is bright white like a grain of sushi rice.  And looks a little sticky, too.  I am so surprised because I thought this young plant wouldn't be able to swing a flower stalk this early in its life.  Someone had reported online that their plant took three years to bloom.  Lucky me!   I will get to watch it grow, which will make it SO much easier to draw!  In this photo you can also see the slightly serrated edge of the leaf.  This is too tiny of a detail for the drawing, I think, but interesting to notice, just the same.  OK and while we are at it, staring up close and personal like this, notice the veins of the leaf -- all shooting straight up in parallel formation.  This is typical of all grasses, and I'll be sure to feature it in the drawing.  Stay tuned!

Fraser's sedge - 1

I've been trying to get a composition going for my Fraser's sedge.  When I start ripping apart various disappointing quick sketches I know it is time to call it a day!  Here's what I've got so far:

I'm not entirely happy with it but I think I am finally on the right track.  Here's the difficulty: this plant grows low and wide, except for the small, thin flower stalks that shoot up seemingly out of nowhere.  The image needs to be vertical, to show the most accurate botanical information, so my perspective needs to be looking at the plant as if I were almost at eye level, kneeling in the forest.  (Not looking down at it from a towering height.) Unfortunately, most folks who have ever taken a picture of this plant in bloom, and then kindly shared it on the internet, have not gotten down on the ground but rather set their tripod up above the plant.  I can't copy anyone's photo, of course, but it would sure be nice to see different angles!  So what do I do?  Well I have pretty much got the idea of how this plant grows.  I know the dimensions of the young and mature leaves.  I know how tall and wide the plant can get.  I know how big the flowers are.  I can extrapolate from my baby plant, which is just now coming out of dormancy.  I put all this information together and come up with ideas of how to present the plant in an interesting way on a two-dimensional sheet of paper.  The composition challenge!  This is where the creativity comes in, as I've said before.  In my view, the composition has to have movement because it is of a living thing.  I want your eye to travel all around the plant and see all the interesting parts.  Since the leaves are like bending, twisting ribbons, and the flower stalks are quite graceful, I can use them to this effect. That's the hope anyway!

Another aspect of creating the composition is making some very basic decisions of how I'm going to make the finished piece.  Remember I mentioned the other day that the flowers are small white pompoms?  To paint them, I would need to place leaves behind them so that the viewer could see the white flowers against a green background.  But it turns out in nature, the leaves don't grow vertically as tall as the flower and one would never see a leaf sticking straight up behind a Fraser's sedge flower.  And I've already decided not to work from a high angle (which would put leaves behind the flowers, but would eliminate the ability to show the full stalk and would make the composition too horizontal.) The parts of the flower are so teeny I can't imagine using shades of gray paint to outline each filament.  The better course of action is to make this a graphite drawing and make use of a very sharp pencil point!

I have also decided not to dig up the roots of my baby plant.  It is trying so hard to survive, I hate the thought of stressing it in such a way.  It is a rare specimen, after all!  Instead, I might do a close up sketch of one blossom to the side of the plant.  It really is quite pretty and - naturally - is another example of the Fibonacci sequence.  More on that later.......

Stay tuned!

Something new and different

I am questioning my sanity.  I mean really.  What possessed me to agree to paint - against a hard deadline -  a plant that is rare, difficult to find, and worst of all (dare I say it?) boring!?!  When spring is bursting at the seams around here

and luscious Crayola colors are popping out of the earth,

I foolishly said I would paint the elusive and exceedingly humble Cymophyllus fraseri, or Fraser's sedge.

Seriously??  I must be really devoted to my craft to choose this over all other more spectacular specimens shouting at me from every corner of the garden.  This little clump of grass; a singular shade of green . . . what is the attraction?

Well, for starters, it is endangered.  And so it deserves to be noted.  The BAEE would like to include it in their upcoming book project (artwork submissions due June 1) and so I agreed to have a go.  I received this specimen a few days ago from the Lazy S'S Farm Nursery and I've been staring at it trying to uncover its redeeming qualities.  After relishing painting the undulations and variegations of my beautiful swiss chard leaf, I have had to adjust to a more stark, austere presentation of line and form.

This is an example of the fact that if you stare at anything long enough, and you keep your mind in a state of grace, you will see beauty.  For this little plant, it has to be about the leaves.  Look how gracefully they bend and twist, like ribbons.  And the photo doesn't show it, but the way the leaves emerge from the stalk, unfurling one inside another from opposite sides, is quite interesting.  Finally, and this I gather from photos on the internet, the plant sends up very attractive flower stalks in May and June... like white pom poms at the end of long, thin stems.  Also, I think I'll dig up the roots and see what they look like. (Roots are almost always gorgeous, in my opinion.)

And of course, I love a challenge.  A boring green leaf shade, teeny white flowers painted on a white background, and a looming deadline . . . Perfect!  Worth temporarily setting aside my swiss chard painting.  So now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the drawing table....

Swiss chard greens

More work today on the next leaf of the composition.  Whew there's an awful lot of green!  I'm using a mix of cobalt blue, lemon yellow and a touch of Indian red.  Too many pigments will turn it to mud, as we've discussed many times before.  I'll be going back with a darker, redder shadow color in the valleys, and a yellower green surrounding the highlights.  It is interesting to me to realize that the only place you will really see pure green in the finished painting is in the middle tone areas.  This is because the shadow areas will be a dark complementary color, and the highlight areas will be washed out, to the point of no color at all in some cases.  So I tell myself not to get too worried at this point that the painting is just a big, boring blob of green.  If I flag a little in the days ahead, mixing up endless puddles of green paint, please remind me to hang in there!
Onward!

Swiss Chard report

Happy Easter!  Happy Spring!!  Finally, today the weather seems to have come around to its normal range for this time of year.  The last traces of snow (all of the former snowmen in the neighborhood) have finally succumbed to the warm sun.  Everywhere you look the daffodils are bobbing their sunny heads and the pear trees are bursting to bloom.

I'm back at the painting table, delving in to a painting I had abandoned last fall: the Swiss chard.  Actually, I threw out the first attempt and started anew.  I don't normally give up on a painting, but I started off on the wrong tack and couldn't right it.  This is why I try to make very detailed drawings and notes at the beginning, so that I can do another painting down the road if I need to, without the plant in front of me.

So here we are.  I have transferred the sketch to new paper, and have lightly painted the entire composition in a pale yellow tea wash.  I am now doing what I failed to do the first time, which is to work out the form.  Swiss chard is a beautiful plant -- the lush, dark green leaf contrasting sharply with the pale yellow ribs and veins.  The leaf is tall and puckered and folded and ruffled in a graceful way, yet each leaf stalk is stiff and sturdy, unlike the ephemeral azalea petals and budding tiny leaves we just left behind.  I'm also going to investigate the root, which adds a certain interest to the composition.  This is common practice in a strict botanical illustration, because it adds to the information the artist can convey about how the plant grows.  We'll see if you like the addition of that brown, gnarly thing when we get there.  But for today, enjoy the beginnings of the leaves!

Mixing it up

After the long slog of staying with the flame azalea painting for months on end and finally completing it, I needed to take a few days and do something completely different to restore the creative batteries.  I think I mentioned that I've been taking a watercolor lettering class and this provided the perfect diversion I needed. I am down to lesson #9 -- only one more to go.  I had hoped to complete the course by the end of February and I almost made it!  I'll get that last project done in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share the assignment, which was to learn two ways to create deep shading of letters.  Surprisingly, this is not mindless work.  It takes more brush skill than I've currently got.  But you must know that no matter what I'm doing at my painting table, I find myself in a state of

because I am an

And for that I am eternally grateful!

Flame Azalea - Final

Wow, that is a statement... "Flame Azalea - Final".  After nine months of very intermittent work, I finished.  Whew!  Of course, I could fiddle with this forever but at some point you have to just declare victory and move on.  A teacher once gave good advice, that once you sign the piece, it is really done.  No more tweaking.  No more adjustments.  Just done.  I try to follow this rule and so as you can see, I have not yet signed this piece.  I like to give it a chance to dry overnight and make sure the colors don't shift dramatically.  Especially with the long tiny stamen. So tomorrow I'll give  myself just one more opportunity to go at it with the 000 brush if need be.

For now, I'm happy to step back and share it with you.  What do you think?

Flame Azalea Stamen and Pistil

Who knew one could spend an entire afternoon painting 36 small thin lines?  And yet I did!  It never occurred to me that it would take so long.  I mean really, what's the big deal?  Dip the brush in paint, lay down the line and get on to the next one, right?  Well, if you are trying to portray threadlike, nearly translucent, pastel-colored stamen and sturdy yet similarly pastel-colored pistils protruding from flower centers and waving in the morning breeze, you've got another thing coming.  These particular stamen and pistils change color from coral at the base to palest yellow green at the tips, and look entirely different depending on whether they are in the sun or shadow.  Good grief..........  So at any rate, I finished one flower cluster today, and I'll do the other one tomorrow.  It is difficult to see in this photo but here's how it looks so far:

I am reminded of Picasso's famous line: "There are painters that can change the sun into a yellow blot, but there are others, that due to their talent and intelligence can change a yellow blot into the sun."

Only 42 lines to go!

Flame azalea - progress report

Thought you all should get to see where things stand with the Will-she-ever-finish-it flame azalea:

Peter keeps congratulating me, thinking I'm done, and then I spend another day refining it.  But really really I think it is nearly there.  Tomorrow I have to do the final bit: painting the stamen.  Eek! I am losing sleep over the task because 1) I will have to have paint very teeny, fine smooth lines, and 2) there is no way to correct anything I mess up.  No problem.  Please keep your fingers crossed for me and check back in tomorrow!

Sneak Peek

Lest you think I didn't do ANY drawing or painting these past three months, I'd like to share with you some fun stuff.

I signed up for an online watercolor lettering class, so even though I wasn't intensely painting botanical subjects, at least I was doing some pretty major doodles.  I figure it might come in handy one day if I get into greeting cards and other commercial things of that nature.  The beauty of an online course is that you can go at your own pace, which in my case has been glacial.  So even though I'm behind, I have until March 18 to finish the course.  Fun!  If you are interested in taking this class, check out this Link .  Val Webb, the wonderful teacher in Alabama, is offering it again next  month.

More assignments:

OK and to keep you coming back for more, here's a sneak peek (albeit a poorly scanned one) at our friend the flame azalea, which I've been working on fiendishly for the past two days:

Cheerio!

Bud Break

If I had to come up with a word to explain why I haven't posted anything new on this blog in the past several months, I would have to say it was due to dormancy.  That is to say, I went dormant.  Like the shrubs and trees in winter, I drew all my vital energy down to my roots and went quiet for a spell.  I don't know . . . It could have been the changes our family is going through, emptying the nest. It could be my adjustment to not being needed quite so very much.  At any rate, I recognized that no amount of forcing was going to get me going again.  It just needed time.  I hoped that eventually renewed creativity would well up inside and want out, like the sap rising in spring.

And it did.

 
Several days ago I went out to clip some branches from our witch hazel trees because I noticed them breaking bud.  Inside our house, where it is nice and warm, the buds quickly began to open and this is what it looks like today.

The brown buds swell up and pop open, and teeny flat confetti-like petals unfurl like little yellow pom-poms.  Here in dreary February, it is as if Nature is sending us a cheer-leading squad. Hang in there! You can make it to Spring! Yes you can! Outside in the landscape, I see our three witch hazel trees with their branches all pointing up to the sky like so many arms outstretched.  Yellow pom poms waving at me, You Go Girl!

I feel the ideas flowing again.  The desire to paint for long stretches in quiet solitude in my sun-washed studio.    Channeling creativity in new directions and with greater purpose.  About a month ago I wondered if I'd ever get back to this blog.  After all, the internet is crammed with chatter and does my small voice make any difference one way or the other?  Oh yes, it does. It makes a difference to you, dear reader. And it makes a difference to me.  And in life, if we can touch others hearts even in small ways, isn't it worth the effort?

So now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to my paints.

Humble pie

Hello dear followers.  I am alive and well and getting back in the saddle after a week-long intensive botanical art workshop with Anne-Marie Evans.  Yes, THE Anne-Marie Evans, a veritable phenom in the botanical art world.  She is constantly on the road giving workshops around the world and I was lucky enough to participate in one organized by Botanical Artists for Education and the Environment.   I took with me several scanned copies of my finished pieces as well as our friend, the flame azalea, for her professional critique.  We were to arrive ready to work on something new, so I took preparations for that, as well.

Suffice it to say it was an intense week. Anne-Marie is an incredible teacher.  She gets right down to business; so even though we were coping with the power outage effects of superstorm Sandy, we cobbled together enough flat surfaces and light sources temporarily in someones living room to begin working as soon as the storm would allow.  When she critiques, she really critiques.  (She reminded us, "After all, you are paying me a lot of money to be here, so I give you the full and unvarnished truth about your work.")  Her practiced eye kept finding errors in my painting: places where the detail was inaccurate or the color was all wrong.  As soon as she drew my attention to the problem, I'd see it too, and wonder why I hadn't got it right the first time.  At the end of each day I would sadly pack up my things, ready to throw in the towel on my composition (Why did I tackle something so enormous and difficult??).  And I'd slink back to my lodgings completely deflated.  (To one of my classmates she said: "I know I'm fierce.  I've been known to bring artists to tears!")  But by the next day I was ready to try again, and I'd get to class even earlier in the hopes that extra time would work to my advantage.  Somehow, some way, I was determined to succeed.

I was working on a specimen of Swiss chard:

And while she was very pleased with my pencil drawing:

She was not impressed with my early painting. 

I think I was nervous, to tell the truth.  Can you imagine bending to a task and having The World Expert hovering over your shoulder watching you work?  She kept questioning my rush to work on color before the form was fully set down.  On Wednesday, she suggested I add a study of the root system to make the painting more interesting, so I had to go home and dig up one of the other plant roots in the pot without killing my subject:  

and then somehow fit that into the composition:

Long about Thursday, she realized I really did know what I was doing; I just went about it a different way than she does.  This helped us a bit.  Finally her words made sense to me and I began to achieve the effects she was describing.  On Friday I decided to get her advice on my flame azalea.  I thought I was nearly done, but au contraire!  So much to correct and redo!  So much more depth to convey!  And I can't tell you how many times she walked by my table reminding me to dull the garish leaf color.  ("But it's a spring leaf!" I kept screaming inside my head...) By Saturday I was exhausted but thrilled with all I had learned.  It has been a long time since I've taken a class; and I think years of basking in the glow of my family's praise has kept me from refining my craft.  Now I think I've taken my skill to the next level, really. 

See what you think:



OK, I know.  I do still have to increase the intense tones to convey the depth more.  And fix the width-of-the-stem issue.  And paint the stamen ever so delicately and with varying detail and strength of color to convey aerial perspective.  But maybe, just maybe, this painting can be salvaged after all.

And then I'll get back to the Swiss chard . . .

Short strokes

Hooray!  I am down to the short strokes, as it were. 

Here's what is left to do on the To Do List: a little more darker shading in the flowers with the teeny weenie brush, a bit more definition in the stem, and the stamen (remember them?)  Almost to the finish line!!!

Mock Orange

Since we are talking a lot about orange these days, allow me to share with you my most recent "Musings -- in the garden" essay.  My painting session today was not terribly riveting, so you aren't missing anything earthshaking on that front.

And so without further ado:

Mock Orange

Something has gone dreadfully wrong with my fruit trees.  I bought the tiny twelve inch saplings for $9.00 each at Lowe’s on special.  This was my first mistake.  But how could I resist the thought of kumquat, Mandarin orange, lemon and tangelo trees gracing the pool deck in summer and perfuming my sunny studio in winter?  I brought them home and lined them up for inspection.  Everybody looked healthy, and so I planted them in matching pots and set them outside for their first summer.  No blooms, but plenty of green leaves happened.  And then they came inside to spend the winter with me in the studio. So far so good.  After a month or so, a couple of them even bloomed!  How thrilling!

It must be said that I am not too successful with houseplants, and all the pests in town know it.  Soon I had the local tribe of aphids and spider mites move in, and that was the end of the flowering season.  Still, by the end of the winter, I was delighted that one of the trees, the Mandarin orange, had managed to set two fruits!  There they were, little green balls at the end of two thin branches.  To be honest, I can’t really call them branches.  Twigs is more like it.  I wondered how they would be able to hold up the mature fruit, but figured they would likely be sort of miniature sized, on account of the tree’s young age and all.

Summer rolled around again and out the trees went to the pool deck where it was nice and hot and Mediterranean-like.  They loved it.  More green leaves happened plus a little more height.  And those crazy oranges grew and grew.  Long about July they turned light orange.  Not much longer to wait, I thought to myself. 

Wrong.  They kept growing.  The poor stick branches began to droop holding up such weight.  Let’s give it a little more time, I reasoned.  Surely they’ll turn dark orange any day now.  Right?

That was two months ago.  I am now willing to admit the error of my ways.  First of all, I am not convinced I purchased four different fruit trees, as labeled, from Lowe’s on special.  I have a sneaking suspicion these are the ones whose grafts failed and Lowe’s had to dump them on unsuspecting gardeners, like me.  If I’m really honest, I will admit that three of the four trees I bought have wicked sharp spikes protruding from various branches, which I’ve now come to learn are evidence of rootstock suckers overwhelming the graft. 

I am also willing to admit that I am not about to harvest two Mandarin oranges.  What is growing appears to be two rock-hard mutant oranges that bear no resemblance to a Mandarin whatsoever.  They don’t have that thick, bumpy, dark orange skin with a cute dimple at the stem.  These are pale, shiny and hard, like Christmas ornaments.  In fact, the poor tree looks like something Charlie Brown would have purchased.  I might just throw some holiday lights on it and see if that improves things.  I can’t imagine what else to do, since I’ve also learned that the fruit that has been developing for nearly nine months is inedible.  It is called a ‘sour orange’, in fact. 

Time to start over, I say.  But this time, I’ll head to the nursery instead of the bargain close-out shelf at Lowe’s!

Spring Orange

 

 

As I paint spring blossoms I am thinking about the color orange and how different it looks in the spring and fall.  Orange in the springtime is fresh and light and paper thin.  You see it in Narcissus and sometimes tulips and here, in my azalea.  It can be almost transparent and has a delicate quality easy to spoil.    In painting spring orange, I have to hold myself back.  Stop messing about.  Too much paint and the dreaded 'muddy look' sets in.

 

But fall orange is another matter.  Fall orange is a vivid leaf color.  If you see it in petals, it is on a sturdy, bold plant like a chrysanthemum or a late blooming marigold or zinnia.  It is loud and holds its own in the landscape.  It shouts, "Hey look at me!",  especially when the backdrop is a bright blue, cloudless sky.  The contrast is so vibrant you have to stop what you are doing and take a good long look.  You can't overdo it painting a fall shade of orange.

 

This spring blooming azalea, on the other hand, cheerily greets passersby, though shuns center stage.  It might get a nod or a quick mention, "How pretty!".  It gracefully bows and nods in the breeze, and adds to the spring palette of sweetness and light.  Remember back to April?  When the forest looked like Bambi just passed through?  That is the orange I'm trying to capture. 

 

Color memory is a marvel. 

 

 

 

Painting Distraction

 



Making progress, for sure, but I'm having trouble concentrating due to the color change riot happening outside my studio window:

 

I'm sorry, the Winter Wonderland thing is totally over-rated.  THIS is worth staring at for an undisclosed length of time.  I mean really, you can see the wind, or the effect of it anyway.  You can see thousands of individual leaves.  If you sit and stare long enough, and I'm not necessarily advocating this, you can see the colors shift right before your very eyes.  This view is yellower than it was this morning.  There's more brown, too.  There's more orange, pink and red.  I see more branches.  And it's an overcast day.  You should see it when the sun is shining!

Ah well, back to painting.  I think I am entering the final stretch, thankfully.  Just this last cluster to go, and then more work on some of the fine detail and shaddows.  Plus the branch needs to come to life, perhaps with the addition of a warm brown.  The end is in sight!

Onward!

The morning sun

 



 

The thing I am conscious of today as I paint is the way the sunlight falls on this flame azalea branch.  It is morning.  The light is clean and pure.  It filters through the high canopy of poplar trees and falls at a slant on this shrub.  I like the glowing quality of light in the morning and I'm trying to capture it here.  It isn't the harsh contrasts of high noon on a bright day.  Nor is it the long shadows and golden glow of a late afternoon.  No, morning light in the understory is calm and quiet, like a whisper.  It says, "Psst!  Look over here!  Something beautiful is coming to life!"