Tag: pencil drawing

Leaf of the Day: Kohlrabi Leaves ..yet more drawings

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There are some days when you just wished you had stayed in bed with a good book aren’t there? Today has been a bit of a disaster work wise, and the only thing to do is just start again tomorrow. I am in a hurry with this assignment, but this sort of painting just can’t be hurried and of course things go wrong. So having spent all afternoon drawing the whole wretched thing out on my pristine watercolour paper, ready for the final painting, and laying down the first tones, I managed to get a nice big splash of purple paint on it. So far, for a splashy painter I have been fairly lucky, with only the odd little spot of stray paint but this is, of course, in a non disguisable area. If it were not for this assignment I would have turned it into an insect of some sort..but hey, it’s just sods law and better it was at the start of the painting than at the end. So I am drawing it out yet again.. I am getting a bit fed up with kohlrabi!

I did however make some more quick sketches, a drawing of one of the leaves just to sort the shape out and then a quick painting of one of the folded leaves. They are quite complicated with an irregularly serrated edge, in fact nothing is quite regular about them. There are little ancillary leaflets which grow at intervals along the stem (petiole) and the main blade of each leaf has deep divisions at the base, but not always two. As you pull the leaf away from the rounded and thickened part of the stem, there always seem to be 5, 6 or 7 main veins which anchor the leaf and pull away leaving the little indentations on the leaf scar. Fascinating.
Well I guess finished version 2 will be better…Hmmmm. Meanwhile I am going to find some chocolate..
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More Leaves…

Leaf of the Day: Strange Things from the Garden

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Yesterday I went to the gardens for a quick visit to look at the exhibition space again and for some more big leaf inspiration. I seemed to bump into everyone, all the gardeners and my friend John, a fellow habitual Leu Gardens wanderer. I think there are only two of us who have become partial fixtures. The gardens are looking rather shorn, clipped and tidied with much cutting back and pruning after the big freeze. The frost damage is everywhere, burnt tips of cacti , browned crisped leaves and leafless trees. It does look bare but I feel the garden is just holding its breath, regrouping and poised to burst into rampant growth again. The weather is warming up and there was definitely a feeling of spring.. even here in the land of perpetual green.

Being the relative newcomer, I am still fascinated by the wildlife and especially the snakes and alligators. I know for the native Floridians they are commonplace but I was delighted to see a young alligator down by the lake, perhaps only 4 ft long. They tell me the young ones of this size are still in danger of attack from hungry larger alligators, so I hope I see this one again.

Pedro, always true to form, had found some new and strange things for me to draw. From the depths of a plastic bag and with a magician’s flourish, he delightedly produced these odd furry things that look like some sort of strange rabbit’s feet or a furry beak with 2 eyes. And when I say furry I really mean furry. The covering is not like plant material at all, it’s thick, soft and woolly and even slightly wavy, like a lambs coat. They are the most peculiar things, but are definitely plants or rather parts of plants.

So what are they? I didn’t have time to go and see which plant exactly, but I think they are some of the scales from one of the Dioon Cycads, next time I go I will find the plant to see if I can get a drawing or a photo. Here is a Dioon cone from cycadinternational.com. here

and the “scales” I drew, but now with their backs to you.

The “Dioon” name of these particular cycads is from the Greek, meaning “two egg”, because the seeds come in pairs as you can see below. I have written about the wonderful ancient cycads and their bizarre pollination before here. They are amongst my very favourite plants at the Gardens and I really haven’t given them as much attention as I should, mainly because of their size. I hope I can get a sketch of this one later this week…. kohlrabi permitting.
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Furry Cycad Scales with Seeds


Both images, Pencil on cartridge paper, 8 x 8″

Leaf of the Day: Beginning Big Leaf #1

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I have only 6 weeks to go before I have to put up the exhibition at Leu and, as I habitually do, I make a chart of the time I have left, put it up on the wall and then forget about it. It’s just a little ritual which reassures me that, because I have made a chart, I have things under control. This is self delusion of the first order of course but is comforting. Deadline angst will kick in by about week 5.

I promised myself that I would try to get a few large pieces done for the show so today I have been planning those. I want to paint some more leaves from the garden and this is a chance to tackle some of the larger ones.
I have a beautiful big leaf in the fridge which has been there for a while. Unfortunately I am not quite sure what it is. It came from Leu but the tree has no label, which I am not going to worry about for now .

I haven’t recorded a piece of work from idea to finished piece before so it will be interesting for me to see where it goes and at what point I probably should have stopped.. .. but didn’t!
So first the some tiny quick design sketches, in a 4″x 6″ sketchbook, of some ideas I have been thinking about.

I do so wish I could keep exquisite sketchbooks. I have said before that I so admire the sketchbooks that some artists manage to keep. They are often beautifully laid out, carefully and methodically annotated, all the same size and colour, or in matching sets, becoming works of art in themselves.
Sadly I am not one of those artists, I have tried but just can’t do it. My sketch books are a mishmash of shopping lists, phone numbers, written notes, ideas, and scribbles and would not be valued by anyone except me. I write on anything to hand to work out an idea. I do try to keep all the bits and pieces though and sometimes find an idea that, at the time had nowhere to go but seems much more promising second time around.

I did manage to get the sketch book out for these prelim sketches…

I next started a pencil drawing which was supposed to be a detailed drawing but I abandoned it, because for some reason, I had decided to try the Bristol Board again .. Very Bad Decision. I really don’t like the surface at all, it’s slippery and any bit of grit from the pencils makes nasty scratchy marks. So I converted it into a sketch which is still useful and at least worked out the cast shadows that I like so much.
I also had to scale the drawing down to one third of the leaf’s size, that too was unsatisfactory, as it is partly the size of this leaf that makes it so impressive.

This small drawing made it seem nondescript, so that made me decide on a bigger canvas size too, a nice big 3ft x2ft
I bought a canvas and primed it a warm dark grey and sketched out the basic design and blocked in a bit. That’s it for the painting today.

However I needed to make a more detailed drawing of some parts of the leaf just to understand it better, especially the centre area.. so here is a drawing of a small section which will hopefully help with the painting.
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Big Leaf Detail

Leaf of the Day: Kohlrabi again…

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Just the pencil study today… no time for writing… A day full of those “other things” in life which have to be done.

I got started on this study today at 3 and finished at 7. It’s 10 inches high and pencil on Arches HP. I am trying to wean myself off the cheap sketchbook now and make better studies. The paper makes such a difference but I still am not 100% happy with this particular watercolour surface. It does have a slight tooth which causes the pencil to catch sometimes and then it needs more working over. Bristol Board I find too smooth but may try the vellum finish…the endless search for the magic art materials continues.

These more detailed pencil studies are useful for understanding how the things are put together. The more you understand, the easier things are to draw, well that’s the theory …

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Kohlrabi Pencil Study


Pencil on Arches HP. Size 12″x 8″

Leaf of the Day: Henna Seed Pods

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I am sorry about that rather abrupt break in transmission! I have been in hospital having temporarily lost the battle with my gall bladder, one of those recalcitrant organs like the appendix that seem to cause more trouble than they are worth. I now have the veins of a junkie and glow in the dark. The morphine has worn off so my dreams have returned to just strange as opposed to completely terrifying! ….but am back home …and even more behind with work, oh dear….

So to get back into the swing I decided to do something straightforward, a pencil drawing of this little sprig of Henna pods. It grows in the herb garden at Leu and after my recent experience I thought the herb garden was somewhere I needed to get more familiar with. While in hospital I was reading the excellent Audubon biography by Richard Rhodes and learned that in 1813 he and his wife suffered from the “summer fevers”, merely the possibility of typhoid or yellow fever, and would have been treated with powdered Peruvian cinchona bark, bleeding, aloes, jalap root, cupping and blistering. Rhodes remarks ” however the Audubons were dosed, they were hardy enough to recover from their illnesses as well as their treatment.” Luckily so did I…

Henna would not have been much use to me because although it does have medicinal properties they are more to do with the skin, having some antibacterial and anti fungal properties and apparently an ability to block ultraviolet radiation.


Henna Flowers by J M Garg from Wiki here

It’s a pretty and fragrant shrub but of course most famous for the beautiful dye used for the important symbolic decoration of hands and feet in Asia and in many other cultures. I am particularly fond of this elegant form of body decoration.
From Wiki: “Henna, Lawsonia inermis, produces a red-orange dye molecule, lawsone. This molecule has an affinity for bonding with protein, and thus has been used to dye skin, hair, fingernails, leather, silk and wool.


Image from All Posters by Khalid Tanveer here

The dye is made from the crushed and powdered leaves and interestingly does not “fade” but is exfoliated by the regeneration of cells in the skin. The historical use of henna is fascinating both as body decoration and general dye stuff and there are many sites devoted to it. If you are interested there is a fantastic site which will tell you all you ever wanted to know, with many links too. http://www.hennapage.com/

I could not resist this photo, again from Wiki, taken by David Dennis here

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Henna Pods

Leaf of the Day: Eric, “the Man who knows” and the Kurrajong Pod

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I have now spent almost a year walking round the Garden on my own and finding things in a very ad hoc way, and that’s, generally, how I like it. That element of surprise has made it all the more enjoyable, if I had had a list to work through it could have become a chore. The gardeners, Susan, Pedro, Joel and Tony have pointed me in the direction of some very unusual and interesting things but sometimes there are missing labels or I have questions they cannot answer. On these occasions Pedro always says “you must ask Eric, he will know”.

So on Tuesday, just to see what I may have missed and to get some answers to particular questions I booked a quick tour with Eric Schmidt who looks after the botanical records at Leu Gardens. His knowledge is encyclopedic. I learned about many new things that I would have missed, a scented palm, the ancient and wonderful ephedras, the macaw palm, a rare yellow camellia, maples that look nothing like maples, a cactus with leaves and an acacia with leaves that are not leaves at all. I have discovered the name of the big fig tree near the house and found the Provisions tree and joy of joys, a fabulous pod of the Little Kurrajong, the Brachychiton which I wrote about here ..

It’s very big and very furry. Every bit of it is furry, as if made entirely of velvet. As I was drawing it, the little furry segments huddled together looked like rows of baby monkeys or perhaps little owls, very comical. I am going to investigate this a bit further. Eric tells me these seeds will germinate easily so I may try some.
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Little Kurrajong Pod

Leaf of the Day: Crepe or Crape, Myrtles and Murder

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Probably the most interesting thing I have found out about the crape/crepe myrtle is the seemingly never ending controversy about its name. I had thought it was “crepe”rather than “crape”, because the name refers to the crinkled edges of the petals…in my mind like “crepe” paper, however …..see this and more of the discussion here at Garden Web here

” ‘Crape’ myrtle is the overwhelming choice both in botanical sources and in other dictionary sources,” said Michael Agnes, executive editor of Webster’s New World Dictionary.
The word expert explains that crape myrtle is a compound, two elements referring to one thing. “When that happens, a variant spelling is almost always associated with the compound,” Agnes said. But which vowel came first?
The first reference to crape, without the myrtle, came in 1685. Crepe first showed up in 1797, Agnes said.
“By the time someone decided to call this plant crape myrtle, crape was by far preferred,” he said. The first reference to crape myrtle showed up in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1850.

The trees are everywhere here, in every Mall, on every street corner and scattered around our apartments. While pretty enough in flower I thought the shape of the bare winter stems was more attractive, especially with their little seed pods which are still hanging on. The pale or mottled bark is also a welcome reminder of the seasons in amongst the lush but sometimes relentless green of Florida. I had intended writing about them before, as in November I had found some much bigger pods at Leu Gardens. Sadly they had mostly disintegrated but they belonged to the Lagerstroemia calyculata, which, according to the label is a relatively rare crape from Thailand.


The big and beautiful flowers of the Lagerstroemia calyculata, photo Nirmal Roberts from TrekNature here

But the controversy about the name of the crepes/crapes is as nothing when it comes to the pruning problems and “The Crape Myrtle Murder”, sounding more like an Agatha Christie mystery with Hercule Poirot at last running amok with secateurs, than a horticultural issue.

“Stop the Crape Murder”
Hideous crimes are being committed all ever Texas, some in our own front yards and many right in front of our local businesses. Unfortunately, many have turned a blind eye to the ongoing massacre. Not me! I can take it no more.”…
Such is the impassioned cry from Greg Grant’s article, more here

The terrible crime of “crape murder” occurs when the plant is ruthlessly chopped without regard to the natural branching habit It results in weakly attached new branches which cannot take the weight of flowers and reduces flower bud formation. Better it seems to underprune than overprune and never take its top off!
This is an example of an “underpruned” crape/crepe myrtle which does allows the tree to arch very gracefully.


from Houston Chronicle Gardening here

Go here to Wilson Brothers Nursery for this rather attractive printable diagram with instructions on the correct way to prune .. or is it?..it looks a bit severe to me!

This is the nearest crepe/crape myrtle to us. I took this photo today. It is a couple of yards away from the steps to the apartment and has been tidied up by the garden gang who come round periodically but, even after looking at the diagrams and reading the advice, I am still not sure if murder has been committed or not.

At Leu there are quite a few different ones including the Lagerstroemia calyculata whose pod I have drawn and another Lagerstroemia macrocarpa.
The drawings of the pods compare the size of the ordinary little street crape myrtles and the much bigger pod of the Lagerstroemia calyculata. I also made a quick sketch at Leu a couple of weeks ago because there are two crepe/crape myrtles which stand by a path nicely silhouetted against the dark green oaks. Some people I know think they are ugly in this state but I like to see their structure and tracery. Another reason not to be so quick to prune is for the sake of the birds who love the seeds..and for artists who like to draw them.

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Crepe/Crape Myrtle

Leaf of the day: Galls and more Galls

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I have spent a large part of today sorting out my nature table which is now overrun with twigs and bits of leaves, many seed pods, cones and dried leaves. The pods from the milkweeds have burst open and errant fairy seeds waft around the room with every breath of air. It’s truly a jumble, but in amongst it all was this small leaf I had picked up one day, with two wasp galls firmly attached to the underneath. It’s such a pleasing object. Not quite a exquisite as the potter wasp’s beautifully made pot which I still have here, and not as comical as the gouty galls I drew some time ago (both here). But the simple arrangement of two perfect little spheres on this leaf make this wasp a bit of an artist.

Galls and other insect built homes are fascinating but these are particularly creative. They are the designs of the Gall Wasps, Family Cynipidae, who, although wasps, are tiny, often no bigger than a fruit fly. The galls are formed by abnormal growth of the plant cells stimulated by chemical secretions produced by the wasps either feeding or laying eggs. The plant tissue grows up around the eggs to protect the larvae, but why they are such extraordinary shapes and colours is a mystery. I can see that some imitate twigs but something red and spotted is not really very well camouflaged.
There are saucer galls, beaked twig galls, dunce cap galls, red cone galls, and spined Turk’s cap galls and everywhere I looked I found more. But this site, BugGuide. net here will give you wonderful identification photos by a variety of photographers. Here are some of the examples.

Starburst Gall

Spined Turbaned Gall

Disk Gall

Saucer gall

Horned gall

Hairstalk Gall

Beaked Twig Gall

Spiny Leaf Gall

More photos and a informative article from Hawk Conservancy Trust .org here

Robin’s Pincushion Gall

Ramshorn Gall

There is an excellent and informative poster “Wasp Galls on Californian Oaks” by Ron Russo here . His comment rings true, “the behaviours and structures that have evolved for the successful survival of Gall Wasps are among the most intriguing stories of nature” It’s a great poster.. Hmm.. decisions? .. If I just move the Nine Inch Nails poster over a bit, there will be room for the Oak Galls.. :).

But they are fabulous aren’t they? I realise now I have a couple more which I thought were tiny fungi growing on a twig. I may draw those tomorrow.
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Oak Galls

Leaf of the Day: The Identification of Ant and his Probable Home

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Ant has been very busy today, running about the drawing board and up and down the two desk lamps and while looking through the Myakka photographs yesterday I was reminded that I have now discovered his identity. Pinned to the canopy walkway tower at Myakka are information boards about the wildlife including this..

I recognised my little drawing companion at once who, it seems, rejoices in a name that is several times longer than himself. He is definitely one of the Skinny Dark Elongate Twig Ants, the Pseudomyrmex.
He might be P. ferruginea because they are some of the ants who live in the Bull’s Horn Acacia and I am now even more sure that he arrived with the Bull’s Horn Acacia thorns. He could be P. gracilis or even P.mexicanus Roger :)… The descriptions fit in every way, particularly the colouring. Reading more about these delicate little arboreal ants it seems they are often solitary and live on tiny insects and ( ignorance was bliss) they have quite a bite, but only when provoked or defending their tree. They inhabit twigs and thorns and hollow stems and make only small colonies.


I don’t yet have a good photo of my ant but this is P. gracilis from the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center here

The role of caretaker ants for various trees is fascinating. I wrote about this before here in relation to the Bull’s Horn Acacia and the wonderful Thomas Belt who observed the ant’s behaviour in 1868. They will attack any threat to their chosen tree ferociously and even clear the ground of vegetation to allow their favourite tree the best possible growing conditions, in return they get food and lodgings.
Perhaps Ant’s loyalties have now been transferred to me, although he doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job of clearing the room of mosquitoes. He seems remarkably fit, healthy and happy with lots of small insects to feed on and the occasion drop of honey and an endless supply of new and exciting bits of twig, flowers, fruit and seedpods to play with. However I feel I should to take him back to Leu to his tree as he evaded the earlier repatriation. But there are moral complications. What if he would now be regarded as an outsider and attacked and killed.. How would I feel? But does he enjoy his solitary existence? Maybe are there really two of them and they are perfectly happy here. I shall have to attend to this dilemma soon.

The drawing is of one of the major thorns of the acacia in which Ant and his friends and relations would keep house. The entrance to this particular thorny residence is through the black hole in the part which looks like a bird’s head. The thorns are all hollow and this one is big, some 4 inches across. It’s shape is fabulous, looking like some modernist piece of sculpture, nature’s architecture at its Frank Gehry best and very fitting for my little skinny ant friend.
Oh, that I could have such an inspiring home.

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Ant’s Home, The Bull’s Horn Acacia Thorn.

Leaf of the Day: Snakewood Leaf 2 and the wonders of metamorphosis.

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Today I had the good fortune to see a butterfly hatching and, purely by coincidence, a caterpillar transforming itself into a chrysalis too. There are two chrysalis cases at the Gardens which Joel cares for with great solicitude and affection. He collects the butterfly eggs and raises them, through caterpillar stage, up to chrysalis stage, when he brings them to the cases. He nurtured and liberated over 1000 of these beautiful creatures last year.The butterfly garden at Leu is his domain. I was asking him more about the milkweeds which are the food source for the Monarch butterfly and as we were looking at the line of exquisite jade Monarch chrysalis, one began to emerge.

It is a fascinating sight. The butterfly at this stage has tiny crumpled wings and a huge black and white spotted body which over about 15 minutes pumps liquid into the wings along the main veins expanding them to their full width and beauty. We could see the butterfly experimentally curling and uncurling its divided proboscis which has to join into a tube before it can feed. At the same time a stripy caterpillar was busy shrugging off its striped coat and transforming itself into a chrysalis.

I held in my hand the tiny concertinaed skin of the caterpillar complete with little antennae and legs.
We may have all seen this on the TV and “know” about this extraordinary aspect of nature but to see it happening in front of you is riveting and it’s so quick. I was so busy watching I forgot to take more photos.

I did drag myself away to find the Snakewood again and then I bumped into Pedro who tells me that snakes like to hide in the snaky Snakewood roots and he has seen a couple of old shed skins there, which followed on neatly from the butterflies and also my thoughts about the leaves looking like sloughed skins. It’s a good time of year to consider renewal and re emergence.
He also showed me some beautiful little orchids which have just sprung up in one of the borders on the drive. I have not yet discovered out what they are.

I made a couple more root sketches around the Gardens which I will post tomorrow…Meanwhile I sketched another Snakewood leaf and there is a series about Darwin on the radio this week to catch up with, and I read some more about Burchfield…Oh dear…so much to do/ read/ listen to/ watch/ draw/ design/ write etc etc … so little time…. I am constantly running out of time and the white rabbit in Alice came to mind… so with apologies to Tenniel here is my own Time Keeping Rabbit reminding me that I should get a move on, which I think I will now use as shorthand in the posts, signifying lack of time.

I will have a few others too, each describing my day, sloth (often), procrastination (every day), despair (sometimes), inspiration ( fleeting), ..with a key in the side bar. I need never write again! I could just use pictograms..Hmm that’s a nice little project for a rainy day.

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Snakewood Leaf Sketch