Leaf of the Day: The Rock Strangling Fig

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Today I have returned to sorting out the paints and looking at pigments, so every possible surface is covered with paint in tubes, and paint in pans and little square painted samples of all of them, with notes on transparency, staining, granulation etc. It’s a long and absorbing job and shows how completely misleading the names of paints can be as regards their pigments. Pigments are a fascinating subject in themselves and I have spent hours reading and looking and trying to commit some of the unpronounceable chemical names to memory. My charts have sub charts and all my notes have foot notes.

However I had to draw this nice leaf today before it shrivelled up. So here are a couple of quick studies of a Rock Fig leaf, ficus palmeri. The rock fig is one of the Strangler Figs and this leaf has a beautiful vein structure, with thick red raised veins in the centre turning to cream towards the edges, set against the dark green of the leaf blade.

Strangler figs, as their name implies, can be less than kind to their hosts. They start life as epiphytes high up on the branches of host trees from where they send out roots which encircle the host’s trunk and eventually reach the ground. These roots then enlarge and squeeze the host tree’s trunk while the upper branches overshadow it and take all its light. The host may eventually host die and rot, leaving a hollow giant fig tree. Where no trees are available they will still feel an imperative to strangle something, so in a desert situation they are reduced to the slightly less productive occupation of strangling rocks… hence the Rock Fig.
In desert areas of California the roots of the Rock Fig unite to coat the vertical rock faces and are described as resembling strange wooden lava flows or tumbling like pale frozen waterfalls over the cliffs. These particular leaves are beautiful but the roots of the strangler figs are by far their most interesting feature. Next week I hope to spend 5 days week drawing outside at the Gardens and will have chance for some great strangler root studies.

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Rock Fig

Leaf of the Day: Surinam Cherry

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There has been little time for drawing today as I have been out all day. On the way to Leu Gardens I stopped by the Orlando Art Museum and spent far too long there. Because I am thinking about the colour green I wanted to see how some other painters approach this tricky colour and its only really possible to understand if you see original paintings.
The Norman Rockwell exhibition is still showing and they have a good selection of classic and modern paintings. Rockwell actually uses very little “green” at all. Only viridian really which seems to be the main one and occurs in many of his works, subdued with ochres or with white added and then set against cream and brilliant red, two or three of the paintings there had this similar colour scheme. It was very interesting to look at an exhibition with just one colour in mind.
I also went to do a bit of quick sketching in the African and South American culture galleries where they have some great Pre-Columbian ceramics and beautiful African beadwork.

On to Leu gardens where things are now beginning to look familiar, now I know landmarks and some of the plants and instead of it all being a blur of green, I can spot individuals. Today I also met the head gardener and now have official permission to take a leaf or two here and there to draw. It’s marvellous as I am getting very jaded with the mall borders and the apartment block gardens. However I am now faced with so much choice I don’t know where to start.
I found my friend Pedro again and this time he took me to see another amazing edible that grows in the Gardens. The Surinam or Barbados Cherry eugenia uniflora is a large shrubby tree and at the moment it is covered with small berries that look like little Chinese lanterns. They are in different degrees of ripeness and you should really only eat the reddest ones which are the sweetest. They have a strange flavour which is difficult to describe, sweet but tangy. Apparently they are jam packed with vitamin C. Lots more things are now in bloom including huge magnolias, brilliant yellow trumpet trees and the stunning coral trees, amongst which is the interesting “naked coral tree” which is just begging to be in a post along with the Roxburg fig tree whose huge leaves would cover almost every inch of even the most modest Adam and Eve!

If all this wasn’t enough see and do today I called at the supermarket on the way home and have found some really cool fruit and veg to draw….
Here are a couple of sketches of the cherry.
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Surinam Cherry

Leaf of the Day: “Ferns in Space” The Resurrection Fern

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These three little fern fronds are from the Resurrection Fern, pleopeltis polypodioides..two words I intend to use constantly at the next Winter Park cocktail party. These pretty little ferns can be seen dancing along the lower limbs of the great oaks and making lacy collars round the bases of the palms. They are as synonymous with visions of the ‘old south’ as Spanish moss and Vivien Lee.
Their name comes from their amazing ability to go without water, it has been calculated they could survive for as much as 100 years, during which time they will curl up tightly and appear to be dead. Then, come that longed for shower, they burst into life again, the fronds reabsorb water, slowly regain their bright green colour, and uncurl, unrolling each leaflet to return to their original shape. This near perfect adaptation enables them to survive the hottest of Florida summers.
They are small, only up to 6 inches in height and grow from a central creeping root which threads itself along the tree bark. On old trees they form dense mats and you would think the branches would collapse under the weight but these little ferns are a light as a feather.

These particular ferns belong to the air plant family, strange and fascinating plants which, (when not glued onto horrible bits of resin “sculpture” in the UK and condemned to dust) attach themselves to to other plants, taking their nutrients from the air and from water that collects on the outer surface of bark.
In 1997 this little fern became the first “fern in space” aboard the shuttle, as part of an experiment to see if it would resurrect in space..today I hear they can grow marigolds in moon dust.

These are, as you can see, in their un-resurrected state but the one on the left is beginning to uncurl and its lower leaves are beginning to straighten out. They are from the little cycad I had drawn before here in my post “Dinosaur Food” but I do have my own small piece of resurrection fern which Pedro gave me.
Following his strict instructions I have tied it to a rock with raffia and the rock sits in a dish of water so it is watered by osmosis. I have to stop myself wanting to spray it constantly, as to see the fronds curled up is not what a caring gardener feels a plant should look like. Happily it is rewarding my restraint with some tiny new curly fronds. It’s a little darling.

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Resurrection Fern

Leaf of the Day: The Curious Ear Tree Pod

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The magnificent Guanacaste tree is the symbol of Costa Rica where spent I two extremely wet but interesting months a couple of years ago. They are huge stately trees which grow in the province of Guanacaste where they cast wide and welcome shade for the cattle in the rich pasture lands which border the Pacific coast. The botanic name is enterolobium cyclocarpum and the name Guanacaste is from a Spanish translation of a local Indian word “cauhnacaztli” meaning “place of the ear tree”.

Guanacaste Tree and Seeds

The pods, as you can see, are beautifully curled like ears and when dry, rattle nicely with the dry seeds inside. They are tough and dark brown and the seeds are very hard, like little stones. I can’t imagine how they ever manage to germinate. I would have thought a steam roller would be necessary to crack the outer casing. There seems to be some idea that the natural browsers of these pods have died out.
The 3 local trees are quite small and the seeds I have are smaller and not so pretty as the big Guanacaste seeds above, that are used for jewellery in Central and South America. Waynes Word site on all things botanical had an excellent page on botanical jewellery here

My drawing today is just a pencil study and some sketches of the ear pod. (The line under the pod is the top of my sketchbook..I balance small things there while I am drawing them as I did the tea seed pod)

As a postscript, I am sure the flags will be at half mast today at the Magic Kingdom here, marking the death of Ollie Johnston, last of the Nine Old Men from the heyday of Disney animation. He worked as an animation director on those beautiful early films (Bambi, Fantasia, Pinocchio and Snow White) where the animation is superb, and the mixture of supreme drawing skills and sensitive characterisation brought us endearing and wholly believable speaking animals. According to the obituaries one of Ollie Johnston’ s key contributions was his skill in transferring the warmth and subtleties of human emotion to the characters.
Disney artists’ drawings are always wonderful, here is a lovely sheet of concept drawings for one of the hares in Bambi. They are such good examples of observation and the understanding of form and how the simplest change of a line can effect the expression on a face, human or animal. I will be returning to these inspirational artists soon.

This and much more from the website, Animation Archive here

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Ear Tree Pod

Leaf of the Day: On Durer’s “Turf” and the problem of Greens

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Today I returned to sorting out my paints and thinking about the colour “green” for the next part of the course. Just one quick glance from the window shows so many different greens, from the olive/yellow of the palms right the way through to bluey greens of the hollies and everything else in between. At the moment many trees have new bright leaves, some brilliantly yellow-green and glowing against the blue Florida sky. It is very true that the light of a place has a huge effect on your perception of bright colours. You know how that colourful Caribbean throw you bring back from a holiday looked just lovely in its natural habitat, but now may somehow appear garish against the softer colours of a British climate.

Albrecht Durer. “A Piece of Turf” 1503

I went back to look at the the colours of one of my very favourite paintings, which to my mind is amongst the best of “botanical” paintings and one which still shapes my thinking about about the subject. Painted so long ago in 1503, Durer is considered to be one of the earliest watercolour painters. In this image it wouldn’t be Durer’s intention to paint botanic specimens for the sake of identification but to make a study of something he found interesting and beautiful. It’s a curious image in some ways. Unlike most contemporary botanical work the flowers and grasses with all their imperfections are presented intermingling in a natural way and have a relationship to each other, but then, like conventional botanical work it is set against a plain background. I am given the feeling this piece of land belongs to something else, has left a gap in a field, like a missing piece in a jigsaw.
It is a little slice of reality, without the plants being obviously arranged into a “design”, although I am sure Durer made many compositional and tonal decisions in the execution of this lovely painting.

In my original application to the course I remember writing that I particularly like work that gives a sense of place to the plants.. the artspeak word would be “context”.
Durer also gives each plant its identity (I have spoken of this before) rather than an averaged out version which smoothes out the wrinkles and takes away the character. While I can admire the execution of a beautiful individual unblemished specimen in celebration of the height of perfection of a species, for me, a more interesting piece is something that demonstrates that we do not see plants in isolation, but relating to earth, the interaction of animals and insects and the play of light. I suppose, being an illustrator I like the story!.

Thinking about colour, I also wondered about Durer´s paint. He would have had little choice of green pigments. There were very few natural green pigments and the bright strong greens, like gorgeous viridian, the much loved Pre Raphaelite green, are relatively recent. Green is a notoriously difficult colour for artists because most greens need to be mixed either by you or a paint manufacturer. However, with the continuing development of artist’s paints we do now have more choices for brilliant and lightfast colours. We need them!.. the colours of the natural world are often vibrant beyond belief!

So, green is to be my focus for the next few weeks and I am very happy about that. My own starting point was to draw some leaves from the little euonymus bush. which have an endless variety of pattern and shape. I painted them with the yellows I have and overlayed them with different blues and then ready mixed greens.. not very methodical or scientific but its a start.

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Euonymus Leaves

Leaf of the Day: Lipstick Tree Pod and Fake Blood

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For over a week now these strange pods with their soft prickles have been sitting quietly on the kitchen unit like little stranded sea creatures. Pedro had shown me this tree some time ago, and breaking open a pod, had asked me to crush the seeds between my fingers. The little dull red seeds exploded with a shocking red colouring, like a dense cadmium red, quite beautiful and almost bloody. It didn’t surprise me to discover that the Aztecs used the juice of the lipstick pod seeds to turn their ritual chocolate drinks blood red.

So this is the open pod of the bixa orellana, the Lipstick tree. Other names are annatto or achiote. I had heard of the food colouring annatto, it is used in Latin American cooking, but had no idea that it came in this exotic packaging.
However this gorgeous red colouring is used widely for, as of course it’s name implies, cosmetics, textiles, food and as a wonderful traditional hair dye by the Tsáchila people of Ecuador.


photo Patricio Realpe from Wiki here

“Achiotl” was made into an ink used for 16th century Mexican manuscript painting and Mayan scriptures, and, when the Aztecs were not using real blood, it served as a symbolic substitute for their rituals, no doubt to the great relief of the odd virgin or two.

Here is some grisly blood letting for Tezcatlipoca, the Jaguar god, who looks unlikely to be fooled by mere annatto juice. and a beautiful Mayan Manuscript from the Bridgeman Library here

Here in USA, the rubbery bland stuff they call Cheddar cheese is, unsuccessfully, helped along with annatto to try to make it look appetising but it is also the colouring for traditional English Red Leicester cheese.
Here at the home of Sparkenhoe Cheese in Leicestershire UK they are adding the annatto with, to my personal taste, a more appetising result.

Before embarking on the drawing I made a few sketches of the pods. At the moment the tree only has old pods so I am looking forward to the flowers and new bright red pods. I may even make some of my own hand pressed annatto ink to use in recording some of my experiences here, which, to date I am glad to say, have been slightly less alarming than those of the previous visitors from Spain.
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Lipstick Tree Pod

Leaf of the Day: A Daisy from Popsy and “Tiger” Rats

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Sunday is a day I now try to dedicate to my Darling Popsy blog, so today I have spent all day scanning in the old negatives of Africa and researching East Africa in the 1920´s in general. However in line with this blog, about all things natural, I will just quote a little from the letter I have published this time.
This is from Njoro, June 1926

“When we are ploughing the fields we often see Rats running away in terror, but these are Brown Rats and striped on their backs with Black stripes like a Tiger, they are rather pretty. You would like to see the beautiful moonlight at full moon all over the great Plain, one of the most beautiful things in Africa is the bright moonlight and the stars that twinkle twinkle, in the clear air.”

Reading these letters is making me think I should be illustrating them…(oh dear, yet another seed of an idea now planted…)

I was curious about the reference to the rats but a little research makes me think they are not, in fact, rats at all, but one of the African Striped mouse species. He would have seen them during the day, not only because the ploughing was disturbing them but because they are one of the few rodents which is active during the day and he is right about them being pretty!
Here is a lovely old engraving from 1885 of the Barbary Mouse, the African Striped Grass Mouse (S. G. Goodrich, The Animal Kingdom Illustrated 1885) from, coincidentally, the Florida Educational Resource here

and a photo of these endearing little mice from Edwina Beaumont’s excellent African photos here

The drawing today is not mine.. but, keeping it in the family and appropriate to today’s activities, this is a pen and ink drawing from Joyce Thackeray, daughter of Allan, the “Popsy” of the letters and my mum. Her musical and artistic talents were inherited from her father and a few fragmented bits here and there passed down to my sister and myself. Teaching “old fashioned” drawing skills to children is, I think, more difficult today. It’s hard to imagine a class of thirteen year olds now quietly making a careful pen and ink study of flower.
On 20th October 1931 at the age of 13 Joyce Thackeray (SEN/ 2A) received a mark of 44 out of 50. ( noted on the back) for her drawing…I doubt I am doing so well !
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Popsy’s Daisy

Leaf of the Day: Schefflera and the Genius Of Robert Hooke

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Today is Saturday, the weather is lovely and we walked to the main centre of Winter Park which is a street lined with cafes and shops and wine bars. It has a distinct European feel, you can still find independently run shops and down a small alley there is .. joy of joys… a delightful small secondhand bookshop run by Evelyn Walters Petit, Brandywine Books.

It is a shop that has a complete mixture of old and newish and Evelyn plays some cool jazz while you browse. But the excitement of a secondhand bookshop is that frisson of anticipation as you step in, an anticipation of finding something unusual, something you didn’t even know you wanted five minutes earlier and something you may never have known existed at all. It has to be a black day in my life that I fail to find something fascinating and desirable in a secondhand bookshop.

I also love the books with those scholarly pencil notes in the margin, with others’ names written on the flyleaf, newspaper clippings, cinema tickets and shopping lists. It’s hard to get those in Borders or Waterstones…so we did come back with a few, including Lisa Jardine’s biography of Robert Hooke.
Hooke was a brilliant irascible man, who argued with Newton, worked with Christoper Wren to rebuild London after the Great Fire, was an inventor, architect and engineer, kept himself going with laudanum and cannabis and amongst other things was the author of “Micrographia“, a startling illustrated volume of engravings published in 1665 based on Hooke’s own drawings of natural phenomena seen under a microscope. Here is one of them.

and another based on his drawings of fossils.

It will be an interesting read.

Caught up with all this literature, sun and my first swim in the pool here I haven’t had much time for drawing but after yesterday’s post I have been thinking about simplicity, shape and monochrome. Here is a big, (too big for the A4 scanner) simple pen and ink drawing of a handsome and shapely Schefflera leaf.
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Schefflera leaf.

Leaf of the Day: Coral Honeysuckle.. Last Rites

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Well the plant survived quite well in the salad drawer of the fridge, the open flower held out until 10.am, then slowly detached itself from the base, slid down the stamens and flopped onto the table. The leaves curled more as the day went on and as it got hotter so the crayons got softer and stickier, the lines got thicker and my temper got shorter, but I did manage to get it all done. Here is it immortalised, glued onto the paper with coloured wax. I am just hoping it won’t now stick to the scanner and have to be scraped off with a palette knife.
It has been an interesting experiment. Any observed drawing has to be a good exercise whatever the outcome but I feel now that I might do a coloured pencil drawing more in my own style just for fun.
There are many very good coloured pencil artists and societies dedicated to the medium. My personal preference is for artists who explore the inherent quality of the “pencilness” of them, of line and shading combined. I like to be able to see the mark, the handwriting if you, like of an artist, which is where I might very well be at odds with the stringency of the botanical art course. The obliteration of the mark of the artist seems quite the thing to strive for at the moment in botanical work which I feel is a shame. It is something I will want to discuss with the tutors on the course.
I personally feel that to see the brush work or pencil work adds so much to the “life” of a painting or drawing, accuracy and detail need not suffer.
It also takes much more skill to develop a style in mark making and paint handling than to slavishly copy a photograph. Sadly, copying skills are so often admired and perceived as the height of artistic achievement by the public. I am always sorry when a beautiful pencil or charcoal drawing is left unnoticed in a gallery when, yet another, tedious, photoreal still life is oohed and ahhed over. I am also very fond of monochrome work, pen and ink was where I started. Like black and white photographs there is a focus on the beauty of line, tone and shape without the distraction of colour ..some black and white artists to follow in next posts I think.

Meanwhile here is a lovely coloured pencil artist, whose work is more after my own heart, Katherine Tyrrell. I should have found her blog sooner as she has some very good advice for Coloured pencil users. Do visit her super art blog with lots of information about coloured pencil and art of all sorts http://makingamark.blogspot.com/
I love the textured shading and the beautiful colours, see more of her prints etc here

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Coral Honeysuckle

Leaf Of the Day: Coral Honeysuckle.. first contact.

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I made my weekly visit to Leu Gardens today as a treat before starting on a final piece for the coloured pencil unit of the course.
The gardens change every week with new things coming into bloom or leaf, it’s a lovely time to be there. One really delightful discovery was the Chinese Perfume Bush which is a nondescript looking shrub but the perfume of its tiny little white flowers is exquisite.

I have been undecided about which plant to draw for this second assignment, and in the end it comes down to something that will hopefully stay alive for more than a day. I also wanted to do something local to Florida. Pansies might have been easier but what is the point of being here and not engaging with the locals, so I collected this piece of Coral Honeysuckle on the way home. It grows all over a neighbouring fence and so if parts of it die I can go and get some more. I think it grows in the UK as well but is rather cold sensitive ..here it is rampant. I have to say I am not very fond of it but closer study may reveal some hidden beauty. It just lacks the delicacy of the native UK honeysuckles and this one has no scent and the colour is garish.

Anyway today I did a quick “get to know it” sketch and am starting to draw it out. I have given myself all day tomorrow to complete it, so I hope I can keep it alive overnight. ( I have put it in the fridge). If I can get the main drawing done and one leaf and one flower in colour then, if I have to bring on substitutes later, I will at least have a guide to the colours.
There is still one other problem in that I have to hang it from my magnifying stand, as it grows trailing down a chain link fence so the stem has to be a the top. I have put a little piece of wet oasis on the cut end which I spray from time to time ..so I hope that will do the trick.. photographs beckon…

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Coral Honeysuckle Sketch