Back to Posting and New Projects

I am now back from two weeks in UK, an week´s excellent art course in Sarasota, a weekend in Fort Myers and have just finished and posted my first submission for the course I am working towards. I am getting back to the blog and I have quite a few drawings to post from the last 3 weeks and will be posting them retrospectively. Some are already there but I still have some catching up to do.

I have two new projects on the go as well!…. one I have already spoken about here in the post for Feb 7th which is to get the Lincolnshire Country Food book republished and the next is to develop a website/blog which will be all about my grandparents during the few years they spent in India and Kenya in the 1920’s. I never knew my grandfather but he and my grandmother wrote wonderful letters back to Mum when she was a little girl staying with relatives in Montrose in Scotland. I am sure the web is awash with letters and photographs from India and Kenya in the 1920´s but these are a bit different because my grandfather was an engineer working for John Fowler of Leeds and took steam ploughs out to help develop the local agriculture. I have many old and faded negatives to print up and sort out, as well as the letters to transcribe, so I will be busy. I am hoping that someone will find them on the web and either fill in some missing gaps of the family history … or decide that they are a wonderful subject for a film and buy the film rights… hmmm.. I see flying pigs ..but you never know.

Just a note for my faithful readers. If you are a subscriber you will sometimes get the uncorrected, unedited version as I have to publish before I can really see how the layout has worked… (and my spelling is very bad anyway).. I do normally get things fixed in time ..but let me know if I have anything completely wrong.

Leaf of the Day: West Indian Mahogany

I found this pod in Sarasota’s harbour-front car park while attending the course there. We had had some heavy rain and strong winds the previous day and a few of these strange pods were scattered around under the trees. I had never seen these before and was completely fascinated by their structure. Most were split open with their winged seeds spilling out onto the ground but I located a couple which were fairly intact and took them back to the hotel.
Overnight they began to dry out and open up so I dampened them down a bit, wrapped them up tightly and hoped they would survive until I got back to Orlando the following week. One of the hazards of picking things up from the ground is that they may have the odd unwanted passenger and sure enough a little earwig shot out and disappeared under the couch in the room. I really didn’t fancy spending the night with a earwig so found it fairly quickly, thankfully without having to dismantle the whole room, and popped it out of the window. I will have to remember to shake things in future!

The pods did survive but as I was making this quite detailed drawing, a week later, this particular pod began to open up alarmingly quickly and by the end of the day, was quite different, one section having fallen away completely and the seeds beginning to come away.
The mechanism of the pod is amazing. It opens up from the stem end and splits into three, then a sort of inner lining begins to buckle and pushes the outer casings farther and farther out. As this happens the winged papery seeds, which have been beautifully and compactly arranged around a central core (itself attached to the stem), begin to open out too and fall away. Quite beautiful.
The leaves are pretty too..pinnate with pairs of delicate sickle shaped leaflets. At the end of the leaf there seems to be no terminal leaflet which must be quite unusual, unless I have an odd sample. The correct term is “paripinnately compound”
I include today some sketches of the pod in its closed and open stages which I made as it opened up.

This is the mahogany tree, swietenia mahogani which was used by Chippendale and Hepplewhite in the mid-1700’s and was the original mahogany shipped back to Europe at the beginning of the 16th century. Today mahogany used for furniture is from a bigger tree, the Honduras mahogany swietenia macrophylla.

This drawing is the last for stage one of the course. From March
there will be more colour !
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West Indian Mahogany

Leaf of the Day: Azalea

What would I do without the Mall borders? This is from the other nearby Mall. I like to vary my leaf and flower forays. It would be deemed somewhat dubious to be seen too often hanging around the Mall not only with a pair scissors.. but, worse and more suspect, without any shopping. They love to shop here.!
This little azalea is the second piece for part one of the course. It’s pencil, but shaded with hatching rather than continuous tone.
The azaleas are in full bloom everywhere now. I should get back to Leu Gardens and Kraft Gardens very soon, both were promising beautiful spring shows.
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Azalea.

Leaf of the Day: Tradescantia and Creeper.

The first piece for the course is a very pale outline drawing, deliberately so I hasten to add, as a precursor for watercolour painting. It was almost impossible to scan and avoid some dark shading from the paper and it does look a bit insipid here. It is from the Mall borders near Albertsons. The gardeners were weeding and thinning so this was resued from the heap of cuttings. I shudder to think what they think I am doing.. It came with this little creeper affectionately clinging on so I decided to draw both. I liked the delicate creeper against the big strong shape of the tradescantia. These tradescantia are huge Florida types..and the most gorgeous purple. This is another that will appear soon in colour.
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Tradescantia, Purple Heart

Leaf of the Day: The Banyan and Goldenrod in Fort Myers

I have recently encountered 2 amazing banyan trees. One at The Landings in Sarasota and the next one farther south at Fort Myers where Chris and I were having a weekend break. The majestic and stately banyan in Fort Myers is part of the Ford Edison estate which we visited yesterday.

This particular tree was given to Edison by Henry Firestone in 1925 as a 4 foot sapling when he, Edison and Henry Ford were pursuing the possibilities of a domestic source of rubber at the laboratory in Fort Myers. It was said to have been taken from the Great Banyan in the Shibpur Botanical garden near Calcutta the largest Banyan in the world.
The history and growing habits of the banyan (Ficus bengalensis) are completely fascinating and it is a botanical wonder. The tree starts life as an epiphyte, settling on the branch or bark crevice of another tree. It gradually takes over from its host by producing aerial roots and, once established, auxiliary roots sprout from the branches like long strands of spaghetti. The tree must somehow sense the need for more support and these become supportive trunks necessary to prop up its massive spreading horizontal limbs and so it spreads, on and on .. “walking” its way across huge areas of ground.

In an HGTV article on the Banyan, Bob McGuire explains the effects of the tree!!!
“Bob McGuire, chief arborist at the Thomas Edison Estate, counts the prop roots of the Edison banyan and finds there are 323.
“Visitors touch the roots and they talk to them,” McGuire says. “People are awestruck by the tree. You can tell by their faces. And you know, we still are too. I’m still in awe of it every day.”

There are many other interesting plants and trees to see at the estate set on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River.

W. Stoker, D. Redman after James Forbes., 1811

A few words from Milton:
“The fig-tree at this day to Indians known
In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms,
Branching so broad and long, that on the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother tree, a pillar’d shade,
High over-arched and echoing walks between.”
Milton “Paradise Lost”

The tree was found not to be able to produce rubber in Florida however and Edison then turned his incredible mind and boundless energy to finding another source. He discovered the lovely autumn flowering Goldenrod was capable of producing rubber and there is a huge dried specimen in the laboratory at the museum which Edison had bred for commercial rubber production.
There is a short informative article about him here. and the link to the Museum site in Fort Myers is here
The lab visit alone is worth the price of entry.
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The Banyan

Leaf of the Day: Experimental Grasses

Some very nonspecific grass this time just to try out a couple of techniques from the course. This is done in liquid acrylics but using a wet in wet technique. Much of it, good and bad, is accidental. The scan has picked up the texture of the watercolour paper too much and has made it more grainy than it is in real life. Even with the amount of freedom these techniques give you, you need quite a bit of pre-planning.I am looking forward to more experiments on a larger scale.
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Experimental Grass

Leaf of the Day: Sea Grape 2

Sea Grape 2 is an experimental image from the course I am attending here in lovely Sarasota. On Nicholas Simmons excellent course “Watercolour on the Edge” we are experimenting with techniques that explore the waterproof qualities of liquid acrylics, allowing layering and washing out. The possibilities are fabulous, but as with many painting techniques, you need to understand how paint, paper and drying times work together. Happy or unhappy accidents have to be taken on the chin as there is definitely no softening of these edges when the paint is dry. It is not for the faint hearted and needs a big stack of good quality paper to really experiment.

Nicholas has an enormous amount of information to share and the course is really enjoyable.. It could not be much farther away from the discipline of botanical painting but that was its attraction for me.
Visit his site at Nicholas Simmons.com and see the lovley Fresh Sushi which won the top prize in the 2007 National Watercolor Society Exhibition.
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Sea Grape 2

Leaf of the Day: Sea Grape

A big round leaf from the sea grape ‘coccoloba uvifera’ growing on the shore line at Sarasota. I am attending an art course here and will post more about it soon. I walk by the sea every morning and watch the wonderful pelicans.

The red veins of this leaf are beautiful and the young leaves are a bright reddy orange. The plant is used in the West Indies to produce a red dye. The fruits although not grapes as such, are edible but have a large central stone more like an olive. They are used to make jellies, jams and wine.
On the little British Virgin Island Anagada they make brandy and wine. There is an interesting short piece about Anagada here. Patience must be a key virtue of the Anagadians as they have to let the brandy infuse for two or three years!
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Sea Grape

Still leafless in Linconshire: Weeping Ash & Two Rooks

Sitting sketching in the dining room, I had a good view of the other magnificent weeping tree in our Lincolnshire garden. This weeping ash has been the same as long as I can remember and we moved to this garden thirty two years ago. In the summer this beautiful old tree makes an almost perfect enclosed circle with its leafy branches, a secret den of shade, dark and cool inside. In the spring when the light can get to the ground under the bare branches, aconites and snowdrops push up between the ivy and fallen twigs. We always watch the tree for its first leaves.
” Ash before oak, we shall have a soak.
Oak before ash we shall have a splash”..
Thankfully the black buds of the ash are normally the last to appear. When I went home last year in May it was just getting its first leaves. Weather lore is another fascinating subject which I will no doubt return to and the superstitions about trees are legion. A couple of rooks kept returning to caw in the branches. I am very fond of rooks.

Again with this drawing I misjudged the size of the tree and it is spilling off the edges of page. I have taken some photos of the twisted stems of the trunk which I hope to use for a large painting in due time.
I am still regarding these sketches as warm ups. Its just a good discipline to try to do something every day..this one is with a felt tip pen. It was a difficult job scanning it, as the paper is just slightly bigger than A4. I had to do it in 2 halves and deal with shadows on the paper, but I think it’s OK for a sketch.
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Weeping Ash..with rooks!

Leafless of the day: Weeping Beech

I am now back in Orlando very briefly before going to Sarasota tomorrow for a course, but have a few posts still to make of the winter Lincolnshire landscape where the deciduous trees show off their beautiful tracery of branches. This sketch is of the magnificent weeping beech in our old garden. The spread of this tree is immense..much more than the drawing suggests.. as you can see I ran out of room on the paper.
Its twisting branches rear up and fall again in long searching fingers with a million fine stems falling to the ground. In the summer the tumbling leaves obscure the main trunk and clothe most of the lower branches, but the tops of the branches are always visible, I used to think they were like huge bony hands holding up skirts of wind blown swaying leaves. It is very beautiful.

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Weeping Beech