Tag: sketch

Leaf of the Day: Big Leaf #1 a Bit of Progress, Big Leaf #2 a Start

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I have worked all day to get some more paint on these canvases. It’s a good 18 months since I worked on either a large scale or in acrylics and I am trying to brush up on my rusty techniques, and get re-aquainted with bigger brushes and having to stand back, rather than working with my nose 3 inches from the painting surface. I tend to forget how very “plasticy” acrylics are, how horribly quickly they dry on everything they touch ( a mixed blessing) and how much paint I need to cover the larger surface. These are not expensive acrylics though, just student grade which is fine for now for working out these ideas. There is always the possibility of working over in oils later.
I am not at all sure how these will turn out at all, but it’s good to have a change.

Leaf number two is the beautiful twisted Snakewood Tree leaf which I had already sketched and made a detail study of here. I think it may be easier to work on at a larger scale as I found the small detailed study very tedious. This leaf has the huge advantage of already being dried up and has not changed since I last drew it, so I can take my time. The other one has been in and out of the fridge for the last few days and is on its last legs now, but I am not so worried about the absolutely correct details in these big paintings, more the spirit of the thing.


Big Leaf #1 Stage 3, acrylic on canvas 2 x 3 ft.


Big Leaf #2, Snakewood tree leaf, Stage 1, acrylic on canvas 2 x 3 ft.

Leaf of the Day: Using Photos and Copying..

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Today, prompted by a question from Sree and something that always comes up when I am teaching, I have been thinking about the use of photographs and copying.
I have not had to use photographs for the drawings so far, but now I am working on these bigger pieces, and want to include some wildlife and have a deadline looming I will be using some photographic help. So for my own sake I thought that I would just try to clarify exactly how I see the role of photographs as a creative tool.

But firstly some moral thoughts on Plagiarism and Stealing.

Copying Photographs
The first most obvious, no brainer, in your face, fact is that if it isn’t your photograph and you are copying it without express permission, especially if you are intending to sell the work, you are committing a crime. You are stealing someone else’s work, their time, investment in equipment, compositional skills, eye for detail and lighting, hours of hard work which might have involved travelling to obscure parts of the world,etc etc. But worst of all, you are stealing their creativity.
Of course in every art class/group/college, private studio or kitchen table across the world there will be people doing just that. If, suddenly, all photographs disappeared so I think would 90% of the artists.

As a commercial illustrator it was neither acceptable nor professional to copy photos, and you can be sued. Photographers have sued artists in the past, successfully and quite rightly. But I have “used” many many photographs in the past. From sheer practicality, if asked to include the Taj Mahal in a piece of work with $50 fee and a 3 day deadline, it is impractical to take a trip to India. What I would do is find as many photos as I could, do some drawings, and make it my own interpretation. When realistic figurative illustration was fashionable for book covers and women’s magazine stories, some illustrators would hire professional photographers, models and costumes to get the correct poses. It cost money but saved time and was not going to initiate a law suit from an irate photographer.

Copying Other Peoples Work
It’s theft, morally indefensible, cheating and underhand to copy another artist’s work and claim it as your own.
Last year I attended two painting courses, one in the UK and one here in the USA, Both tutors cited examples of students on past courses who not only copied pieces of their work, but then showed them to the tutors, saying they would be entering the work for competitions, printing it or giving it to a friend as “their own work”. No malice or deception was intended because the student showed the work to the tutor but the insensitivity was quite unbelievable. They had not been creative, original or honest, which may seem a harsh judgement,but it needs to be said.

So when is it OK to use photographs or copy other people’s work? Some simple rules.

If it’s your photograph… Yes (but see below for pitfalls)

If you have permission from the photographer… Yes (there are sites such as www.wetcanvas.com which have a library of members photographs which can be used by artists.)

If you are copying a photograph as a learning exercise and not intending to sell it or display it as your own work … Yes.

If you are using photographic references as a research tool and will construct your own image from them …Yes

If you are copying someones else’s work to learn techniques …Yes
It’s how artists learnt in the past, art instruction books encourage you to copy step by step examples and I do it too. But if someone wanted to buy the work or you are showing in public, you should clearly say it was a copy.

You often see students in Art galleries copying from paintings (here in the Louvre, spot the Mona Lisa) to study technique colour, compositions etc.

If you are are an excellent professional forger, intend to run rings round the overblown pretentious art market and expose their underhand dealing methods, have a damn good lawyer and lot of nerve and it makes a good film…Yes.. (but not of course for personal gain .. that just would not be good form)

It’s really quite simple, if someone copied your work you would not be happy (no, it’s not flattering) so don’t copy someones else’s, be inspired, study techniques, composition, colour, lighting, from the work of others, then do your own thing, be creative, be original

Using Photos
Of course it’s OK to “copy” your own photos anytime but the pitfalls of using photos are legion. Photos distort, flatten, obscure and mislead. Probably the most disastrous use of photos is in figurative work where an artist has no knowledge of the human body or the skeleton, to be able to correct foreshortening or to understand what is happening in obscured shadow areas. For some reason, paintings of children on the beach seem to produce some of the worst problems. It would be very ungallant of me to cite examples because everyone paints for different reasons and some are beginners but you can see what I mean if you look on the Internet.

So to help avoid these problems here are some basic rules that need to be observed when working from photos, even if the work is to be very stylised or in cartoon form. Usually it is all about connecting hidden lines, i.e. making sure that arms do meet up with the body at the shoulder, hands that do at least look as if they have fighting chance of flexing at the joints.
It usually involves a bit of extra homework and observation which, OK, takes a bit of time but is well worth it. Too many beginners just won’t take this small learning step. Hands are always a problem for beginners and experienced artists alike, sometimes just pointing out that they generally have examples to study at the end of their arms seems to come as a complete surprise…

A very basic using photo demo..
Here is a blurry bad photo I snapped of two white ibis.
I am assuming this was the only photo I had of ibis and I absolutely had to use it and I have a half hour deadline. (I have had worse photos to work from, from pet owners..)

I would make 2 immediate decisions:

1. Not to try to make it detailed because I can’t see the details of the feathers etc…so it has to be a sketch.
2. To change the composition slightly.

Just a simple tracing of what I can see might give me this, which is unfortunate for many reasons! The front bird doesn’t appear have a neck!.. and the composition will look better if the birds are overlapping

To make them look more like birds I need to look at a skeleton of a bird,(quick Internet search found this, not an ibis but it helps)to try to understand more about the underlying structures.

from New world encyclopedia image Rick Swarts

I would then overlap the birds , pushing one into the background, and think of how they are walking, i.e. coming towards me at a slight angle… I would then re-draw them with this and the skeleton in mind.

Finally, redraw or trace onto watercolour paper and add some colour to the sketch.


A very simple sketchy sketch of two ibis.

One of my basic rules is, “if you can’t see it well or work it out properly from references .. leave it out”. ..Disguise it, use long grass, water, bushes, motion blur, clouds, mist, something else in front, crop it …etc etc. Nothing can look worse than an “accurate” painting where something has been unclear from a photograph and the artist has had to make it up. It’s so easy to get it wrong.

If I wanted to make a detailed painting of the ibis I would have to get much better references, spend some time watching them and ideally get up very close to a tame one or see a preserved skin… Controversial? Yes, and always a problem for realistic artists… your model dead or alive?
This maybe the next post.

Leaf of the day: Bugs in Paint #6…Six CitrusTrees..

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I was full of resolve to face the rude jogger today but of course she did not appear. The bad person in me just hopes that her heart monitor is up to 8 on the richter scale and that the perfect pet has bitten the neigbour’s cat.
Aside from that, all was tranquil today at the Gardens, my last out of doors painting day, at least for this week. Squirrels were prancing and lizards basking and I finally got settled and knuckled down to sketch 6 citrus trees, but this time in colour, with minimal pencil. It’s really drawing with a brush I suppose. It was rather more work than I anticipated but good practise. Here they are in order of size..

The little Oval Kumquat

The equally small Buddha’s Hand citron

The Sunquat

The Ponderosa Lemon, more lemons than leaves..

The Hirado Pommelo

The huge and beautiful Duncan Grapefruit from yesterday again.

These sketches are fairly fast but waiting for the paint to dry holds me up and I am impatient to get things down. Looking at the whole tree, rather than just a leaf or flower gives you a sense of its “personality”, its growth habit etc, and they are all so different. I must say that I enjoyed today and I am beginning to think about making a couple of more finished paintings of trees. Maybe a tree portrait.. but which one ? ..

Leaf of the Day: More Scribbly Drawings and a “Jammy Mouth”

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Today got off to a bad start due to an encounter with a self righteous jogger and dog. She, Lycra clad, expensive jogging clothes, heart monitor, bouncing ponytail, was on the wrong side of the cycle path. Perfect pedigree pet on leash, was on the other. So where do I go? She imperiously pointed me to edge of the wrong side of the path and shouted “get over”… I, struggling to get bike out of the grass was too amazed at such rudeness to say anything .. but have seethed about it all day.
Thinking I would have some tranquil calming moments in the Garden was a mistake as I had forgotten Thursdays are mowing and leaf blowing days and today there were school trips and a wedding. I did find a really nice, tucked away spot to draw and then was besieged by mosquitoes, so moved on from there to eventually make some more sketches of trees (and plan my jogger revenge).
The watersoluble pencil I had yesterday was not up to much, this one today is a little bit darker which is better because I can work more quickly. They are very handy for sketching when you need a bit of tone without the fuss of paint.
I was saying yesterday that if people are not painters they often find scribbly drawings hard to respond to and I dread being asked to show people my sketchbooks. Today a very nice lady asked to see what I was doing. Oh dear.. I could see the disappointment on her face as she looked at my sketches. The only one that got a spark was the drawing of the house from yesterday. She was thankful there was something she could recognise. She looked at me so kindly and in such a concerned manner, like a mother indulging a child’s first terrible pottery ashtray, I was sorry I had not come up to scratch. We wished each other a very happy Christmas. Ah well…

A Moringa tree,

Unidentified deciduous tree ….

The very tall Hedge Cactus.

The big Duncan Grapefruit tree, heavy with fruit and a beautiful shape both from this angle..

and from this angle too…

And the wonderful cactus which is growing in a head-shaped pot looking like some wild botanical Medusa.

Yesterday’s little spider was still there today so I now have a better photo of my own. On Tuesday I had seen this little flower but the plant is very small with only a few blooms, so I could not take one to draw. Today however, two had fallen on the ground, so I took the opportunity to make three little studies of the Ruttya fruticosa.

Labelled as the Hummingbird Flower, and in profile these little 2 inch long flowers really do look like hummingbirds, but also delightfully called the Jammy Mouth or Rabbits Ears. I hope the drawings and my, for once, decent photo explain why. The nectar rich flowers are attractive to birds, bees and butterflies and, I presume hummingbirds.. do they get confused though? The plant is native to Africa and is only a tiny thing at Leu but will grow to a shrubby three foot bush with these very sweet little flowers, also in yellow… (I am still planning my jogger revenge, if I see her tomorrow I am going to shout “Jammy Mouth” at her…that’ll teach her)
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Jammy Mouth or Hummingbird Flower

Leaf of the Day: Bugs in the paint #4, Spider and more Sketches

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I think after yesterday’s post I was more aware then usual of spiders, and one of the first things I came across today was an almost invisible web, strung across the sea grapes, and in the middle, carefully threading and mending was this amazing little spider. I have never seen anything quite like this. I found out about it by Googling “spider that looks like a star”. Well I thought so, locally they are called crab spiders.

I am sure Floridians will be very familiar with this little creature with a big happy face on his back. This is the Spiny Backed Orb Weaving spider. Gasteracantha cancriformis
My photo is not too good but here is what it really looks like from a wikipedia photo taken by Mkullen in Hernando, Florida here.

They come in a variety of different colours some yellow, some red. There is a mountain of information about them on the web, (as there would be…:)…), and I now know more about them than I really care for. But these little spiders are pretty, beneficial and harmless and one thing I didn’t know is that baby spiders are called spiderlings…that makes them almost acceptable.

The garden was very busy today and I could not settle, everywhere I went I was either in the way or my chosen spot was busy with gardeners. So I decided just to sketch more or less on the hoof, with the small 9×6 inch sketchbook and a big soft water soluble pencil. I was looking more up than down today, mostly at the trees. I am fascinated by the huge live oaks whose limbs spiral skywards then arch and curve back to the ground sometimes with the accompanying frill of little resurrection ferns dancing along the length of the branch. These scribbly sketches are great for looking …just looking, looking looking and looking again. You have to really take in everything to make even a few lines.. an exercise in reduction. At the end of it you have on paper what has interested you, even if it is only one beautiful curve. To the artist this is invaluable, to the viewer I know, it is often incomprehensible.

The first three are of paths. I like paths and especially paths that branch or curve away.
This is the avenue of Camphor trees with the right path leading down to the lake.

A diverging path by the lake

…another path by the lake.

Some cheese plant leaves

Oak limbs and cheese plant leaves

The spiralling trunk of a live oak

A view of the old Leu House, with its balconies dressed for Christmas.

Leaf of the Day: Bugs in the Paint #3 Garden Sketches

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Today has been a glorious day, with a chilly, misty start. You could smell the fog as it drifted across the lakes this morning and all the leafless Crepe Myrtle trees were wreathed in visible spider’s webs. A jetty on one lake I pass has a little lone Christmas tree which looked lovely silhouetted against the mist.

When I arrived at the gardens I went down to the lake overlook where great flocks of waterbirds were circling and skimming the surface, appearing and disappearing in the fog, all greys and blacks and whites.

The spiders webs were also uncomfortably visible here, hung about with mist and strung across the paths and between the trees, some huge, easily 3 feet across. I really prefer not to see them, and their not-so-little occupants. I sometimes feel I have been wrapped like a cocoon after a visit to the Cycad garden and I now adopt ‘the stick in front of face’ approach to prevent being completely disabled by spider’s webs. It’s doing nothing for my arachnophobia. Luckily the spiders are not as big as the recently recorded Huntsman Spider found in the Mekong delta with a massive 30 cm leg span. This, the bright pink cyanide producing dragon millipede and more here . If the spiders at Leu were that big I would be hugging the walls of the Mall instead of communing with plants and would have to switch to drawing home appliances. I wonder what the market for fridge and cooker drawings is like?

This week I had actually planned to work outside every day as my pledge to work plein air once a week has come unstuck somewhere. Yesterday was rather dreary but today I eventually did get out. So with a minimum of stuff, 3 sketchbooks..(two for watercolour so I can let one dry while I work on another and one for pen / pencil etc) one pencil, brown pen, one brush, little paintbox, water and new folding lightweight stool which will make life much easier, I spent 3 hours sketching and did a couple of watercolour studies.
I have to do this now as I really do want to draw/learn about/paint and record some bigger subjects. I sadly can’t bring everything back home to draw. Other than taking photos I have to go and draw these bigger things in situ especially the cactus for patently obvious reasons. So today was a start. The stool turned out to be a bit tricky as it is three legged and easy to fall off, but the gardens were mercifully quiet this morning. So here they are, a mixed bag of sketches.

From the Arid garden .. a cactus

and my favourite Gout plant, waving and saying hello ..

Elephants Ears from the Home Garden

Two views from the Pavilion which I drew back in April.. I love this tall lone pine tree. There is not much to it, but it is a great vantage point for the birds, and towers above the surrounding live oaks.

The White Garden


The path to the White Garden looking the other way from my April sketch.

There may be something here I can develop, but anyway it was a lovely way to spend the day in the eventual sunshine .. more tomorrow I hope, weather permitting ..

Leaf of the Day: Internet Rubbish, Copying, Beauty and Pima Cotton 3

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There are some days when you read or hear something that makes you question things you are doing. Recently two things have made an impression on me.

The first was a debate with Andrew Keen a critic of the Internet and champion of the professional creative artist (in the widest sense of the word) who he feels has suffered because of plagiarism and stealing on the Web.
His criticism is also to do with the acres of rubbish than slosh about in it, and his concern is that there is “less and less authoritative or beautiful ” content and that it has descended into “a cacophony of unregulated, personalized, often anonymous and generally worthless opinion in which everyone is talking simultaneously but nobody is listening to anyone else. Rather than a democratic utopia of creative amateurs, this self-broadcasting Internet revolution is actually leading to mass ignorance and to a pervasive culture of digital narcissism.

I have to say that I do agree with much of this and it was a very interesting debate. I find it increasingly difficult to find really good accurate information on the Web and am profoundly depressed by the amount of copying that goes on especially in art. It gets harder to protect your work and I thought quite seriously about all this when I decided to start the blog. But what can you do ? Very little really. Many artists just shrug their shoulders because even if you could prove someone had used your work, you ideas, or your words, the chances of bringing a successful legal case are very slight and could you afford it? I was reading a poem one day on the Internet and came across a heartfelt plea from the poet. “If you like my work and would like to give a poem to a friend, please buy the small book, don’t just download it…this is my living.” I am constantly amazed by artists who copy someone else’s photograph then put it up for sale as their own work. Don’t they realise they have used someone else’s eye for form, composition and colour and it is unethical and illegal. Be influenced of course, copy to learn, but be sure that what you hold up as your own is truly your very own.
But if I am disheartened by the rubbish and the copyists on the Internet I am delighted by the serendipity of discovering some wonderful things and people purely by accident, and that is its joy.

The second thing that made me think, was about beauty and striving to create beauty. I was reading about Arthur Wesley Dow who was so important to Georgia O Keefe’s ideas and development. She wrote that he had one dominating idea: “to fill a space in a beautiful way”, whatever that space may be.
That is something I should be considering more. It is a very good maxim for an artist and one that many disregard. Beauty is a difficult word and I know that the beauty I see, is very different from many other people’s ideas of beauty, for instance I find the cotton bol more beautiful than the flower.. but its a hard choice.
So my thought for the day is to try to make the whole space more beautiful and to try not to contribute too much to the morass of rubbish out there on the Internet and even if it is rubbish be sure it is my own rubbish!

But back to the indisputably lovely Pima Cotton. I have one flower which I have to draw quickly as the petals are delicate but I am torn between the sculptural shape of the bud which is called a “square” and the colour of the bracts and the yellow flowers. I have only got as far as sketches and the one watercolour “square” today, but I will be painting the flower tomorrow I hope. … but now I am worried about the beauty of the space. Sometimes a sheet of white paper seems far more beautiful to me than anything I have ever put on it!
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Pima Cotton

Leaf of the Day: Water Plantain, Day 4 and the Paper Problem

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At the weekends Chris and I go cycling for a couple of hours. Yesterday and today’s trips have been interrupted by my screeching to a halt after possible accessible plantain sighting. All to no avail as even with my long legged and long armed helper they are still too far out of reach. I have one small flower stem which is still clinging onto life and it will be fine for now. The leaves have been in the fridge and are faring better and I have been wondering how I am going to tackle the leaves.

The next conundrum I have is which paper to use. The possibilities are many and the personal choices of various artists differ wildly, so you really have to try different types for yourself. The surface is important and most tutors seem to recommend a very smooth hot pressed (HP) surface. I had not used hot pressed paper before starting this course as any detailed work I had done before was working with acrylics in a very different style. For economy’s sake (this stuff is expensive) I narrowed it down to either Fabriano or Arches.

Arches “Not” used to be my number one favourite for loose watercolour. It held an expressive brushstroke edge, the colours were bright, did not sink and merged beautifully. That was a different technique of course, where I would seldom work back into the image in any great detail. Yes it did used to smell a bit gummy, but it was hard and crisp and lovely. I feel recently it has changed and doesn’t seem so responsive in the way I liked.
This very old sketch of a jug and pomegranates from Lanjeron in Andalucia does perhaps show the texture of the “not” surface and how the paint has settled here and there but kept those nice edges.


Many years ago I would would be working for illustration on a beautiful illustration board or, in pen and ink on the wonderful Schoellershammer 4R paper neither are available now.

But for some help and advice today I have gone back to read one of the books about the techniques used for botanical painting. Many artists use “lifting out” where, with either a wet or dry brush, you lift some paint to (hopefully) expose the paler paper underneath. It’s a useful and classic watercolour technique, not so easy as it looks in the book…what ever is ???? but might be useful for the leaves. I did a little lifting out in the previous submissions but was not very happy with it.

So I decided to test the papers I have here, specifically for lifting out. Firstly lifting wet paint out with a drier brush then lifting out with a wet brush.
I have two weights of paper, and 2 different surfaces ..
“HP” is hot pressed. ie, very smooth,
“Not” is literally “not” hot pressed, which is slightly rougher.

I try both the “right” side, the watermarked side and “wrong” sides in each case.

The first ones are Fabriano;
Fabriano classico HP 300lb
Fabraino Classico HP 140lb

The second ones are all Arches ;
Arches 140lb HP, not good at all and has an odd “laid” texture.
Arches 300 lb HP, great texture and paint settles in little dips despite it being HP. Lifts out better than 140 HP
Arches Not 140 lb, nice but not much more textured than the 300 HP, lifted out OK.

My sketchbook is a Kilimanjaro note book. I have come to like the paper and did I buy some 140lb Not surface to try, so have added this to my test.
I think it may not be robust enough for much lifting and reworking but has been very nice for some of my earlier informal colour sketches. It did lift out quite well and I used it for the leaf study below.

My overall thinking is that the best paper for lifting out, either dry or wet is the Fabriano but using the wrong side. I am surprised that the side made much difference but in both the Arches and Fabriano I had noticed a very slight grid pattern on the watermarked side which I really dislike…you have to almost get a magnifying glass to see it but I know it’s there now.
There is nothing scientifically accurate about my tests, and 10 different artists will give you ten different opinions, it’s just what works for me.

So in conclusion, I should probably be working on the wrong side of the Fabriano.. problem? Yes ..I have drawn it out on the right side.. ah well..next time.

I did get a slightly better leaf study done which was necessary as these leaves have a complicated vein structure, with a pronounced main central vein, 3 or 4 parallel veins which are pronounced on the back but harder to see on the surface of the leaf, and then many tiny secondary veins which radiate out from the main central vein and seem to cross the parallels…phew…
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Plantain Leaf Sketch

Leaf of the Day: Resolve, Review and Desert Rose Seedlings.

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It’s the end of September, a grey, dull and drizzling day, the world economy is collapsing and its autumn. Autumn is not my favourite season. At least here, the dreary UK signs of autumn, fleeing swallows, dying plants and darkening evenings are not so obvious and, as it cools, we are opening up the blinds and windows and doors. I have cleaned the apartment from top to toe today and I am making a couple of new resolutions.

Today also marks 9 months of drawing and writing about plants and life here in Florida.
My back-to-basics art plan for this year was always to just draw and observe, and not worry too much about a finished piece of work and this will continue, but I have to plan for an possible exhibition next year so I need to push things on a bit.
So I am resolving to work outside at least one day a week…and spend less time on the computer!!.. I have been planning to get back outside and that chance encounter with the two artists last week at Leu was the deciding factor. That and the experiences of the beautiful landscape of the West still vivid in my mind, and some very interesting reading I have been doing since I returned.
One is a large glossy book called ” The Painted Sketch”, American Impressions from Nature 1830 – 1880″ by Eleanor Jones Harvey. It only covers a very narrow time span and deals solely with American painters but charts the rise of the acceptance of the artist’s sketches as “desirable and marketable works of art in their own right” and explains the role of the sketch for these artists and their public. They were an intrepid bunch going into unknown territories complete with oils paints, boundless enthusiam and a huge air of adventure.
“Armed with their sketch boxes, leading artists traveled to remote locations in North and South America and Europe to search out exotic landscape subjects. The public came to equate their adventurous spirits and fortitude with the American character, which gave added popularity to their small field sketches of natural wonders.
Fredrick Church’s small works, in particular, are wonderful. Here are three of them.


Clouds over Olana… 8″x12″..


Study for under Niagra…11″x 17″


Off Iceberg, Newfoundland… 4″ x 11″


Thomas Cole’s sketching box… 17″ x 13″ x 2.5 “

I love these sketches. I love to see the brushstrokes, the handwriting if you like of the individual artist and the confidence of the work. It’s often difficult for non painters to really appreciate the mastery and virtuosity of these works. So many people still equate “a good painting” with
photorealism. The value of these works and the works of plein air painters today is that they record things in situ and for me, there is an honesty about a painting made in this way. It’s not too hard, if you learn a few skills, to copy a photo at home …working outside is a different matter. Talking about one of Church’s sketches from an Ecuador trip in 1857 the writer notes that it,
“bears all of the hallmarks of plein air execution, notably bugs and dirt trapped in the paint, fingerprints from handling the wet sketch in the field and distressed edges from rough treatment in transit” … Fantastic.. a few bugs can often improve a sketch.

Deciding what to paint or draw is the first problem? What will I do? There are not really many remote and uncharted areas of Orlando to explore. Well something small and simple to start with, maybe just a charcoal. It doesn’t really matter what the medium is … it’s just getting out there to do it, that matters.

Desert Rose Seedlings and Pod
Following on from yesterday I thought I should perhaps record the (hopeful) progress of my Desert Rose seedlings.
I had written about Desert Rose and drawn a small branch here
The big pod I had first collected had split and opened before I could draw it, but I did take this photo.

Each side of the 2 arms of the pod split and opened up and the fluffy seeds flew off round the room. I had rounded them up and then had rather abandoned them to an inelegant old tinfoil pastry tin lined with damp kitchen roll. That was the day before we went away, two and a half weeks ago now. They grew, are still growing and I hope I can keep them growing, green fingers firmly crossed..
Here are the seedlings and the empty pod plus a seed. …

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Desert Rose Seedlings, Seed and Pod

Leaf of the Day: Cockspur Coral Tree

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This striking tree greets you as you enter the Arid Garden at Leu. It was one of the first trees in the garden which caught my eye, and that was even before it had flowered. The beautiful twisted branches lie close to the ground and the bark is deeply etched, it’s a very drawable shape. I had been to the gardens today to look for more inspiration for the course submission and this flower is another possibility. It is from the Coral Tree, Erythrina crista-galli also known as the Cockspur Coral Tree due to the spur shaped flowers or the spines on the trunk, I am not quite sure which. (although crista galli really means cocks comb so I would think the Latin name refers to the flowers.)

The first photo was taken on my initial visit in January and the next in April when the tree was in blossom for the first time.

The colour of the flowers which are held in hanging inflorescences (racemes) varies from deep orange red to a dark maroon and they are rich in nectar, much liked by the hummingbirds in their native South America. There is sometimes so much nectar that the flowers drip ‘tears’ giving rise to another local name “Cry Baby”.
It is the national flower of Argentina where the tree is called the Ceibo and where a rather somber legend is told about its origin. Are you sitting comfortably?

Once upon a time there was a tribe of Indians the Guarani who lived peacefully on the banks of the River Parana. Their Princess Anahi, although not blessed with good looks had a beautiful voice and loved to roam in the forest with the freedom of a bird. She also had a brave heart and defended her tribe fiercely against the Spanish invaders but for her rebellious actions was taken captive. In managing to escape she killed her guard and was condemnded to death by fire. As her body was engulfed in flames a transformation took place and she gradually took the shape of a lovely tree crowned with beautiful red tear shaped flowers, the Ceibo.

The tree at Leu is still flowering and due to continue until October but the flowers I have here are slightly more blousy and not quite such a neat shape as they were..perhaps they are past their best or have not enjoyed the hour in a hot backpack. They are an interesting shape though, and of course cunningly formed so that the pollinating insects or hummingbirds have to get underneath the ‘carina’ to access the nectar, becoming covered in pollen from the filaments in the process. The carina is the sheath like spike that has 10 wobbly headed filaments and the alarming black hooked structure which will develop into the seed pod… I looked for an old pod but was unable to find one with seeds and even for a pod lover like me they were just too tatty, but there are plenty on the way.
The flower is an interesting shape and a rich colour and the blossoms are very showy but to be honest I prefer the tree shape to the flowers..

Talking of pods, one of my models has just exploded. I had brought back a couple of curious little pods from the Gout tree ( exciting images to follow), One, the most interesting one, has just popped with an amazingly loud bang for something that is not much more than half an inch high! The 6 parts have ricocheted around the room…sigh…You don’t have this problem with photographs. Yes, recourse to the camera is becoming more and more attractive.
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Coral Tree Flower