Tag: sketch

Leaf of the Day: Dancing Lady Ginger Flower

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With so many gingers springing up and flowering I am going to try to devote the next few days mainly to drawing gingers and their relations. This one is probably the most complicated flower I have tackled so far and it may well not get past this sketch stage.

But how can such an astonishingly dainty little thing like this be given such an ungainly Latin name. However you say it, Globba winitii does not trip lightly off the tongue.

This little plant originated from Thailand and Vietnam and arrived in Europe in the 1700s. Linnaeus named them, possibly from their Indionesean name “galoba” which seems slightly more attractive, but this branch of the ginger family can certainly rise above its awkward taxonomy purely on looks alone.
Globba winitii is one of many varieties of globba, all differing in design and colour. The dangling inflorescence is adorned with purple bracts and delicate yellow flowers and the slightest puff of wind has them dancing like little puppets. They are said to look like traditional Thai dancers or possibly tiny fire breathing dragons, there is a particularly pretty white version called White Dragon.


There are many good photos and information about cultivation and varieties of gingers on this site. http://www.gingersrus.com/ and the image of the white dragon is from http://www.heliconiaparadise.com/
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Dancing Lady Ginger

Leaf of the Day: Indian Ginger Flower

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I have been thinking that Leu Gardens really needs several small booklets as a guide to the more exotic plants to be found in the 50 acres with several different titles, one being “Eat your way round the Garden”. I suppose health and safety issues here, in the land of the very affluent fat cat litigation lawyers, would prohibit such a publication and it could all go horribly wrong. To my very certain knowledge there are some potentially deadly things in the bushes as well as very edible herbs, fruits, leaves and roots. Just on Friday Pedro showed me the delicious bright red cherry like fruits of the Malpighia emarginata, the Barbados Cherry which grows happily untouched in the Demonstration Garden.

This sketch today is of one little floret from the inflorescence of the Alpina calcarata the Indian ginger. This is not the ginger root which we see in the supermarkets which comes from Zingiber officinale but is from the same aromatic family.

One of the “shell” gingers (so called because of the pretty shell like flowers), it is a native plant of India and is also known as the cardamon ginger or false cardamon. This is a lovely, tall and elegant plant with long slender leaves and can reach a good 5 foot. The little flowers, which somewhat resemble snapdragons (it’s also called Snap ginger) are held upright in spikes, and are a pretty bluey white with yellow and reddish-maroon stripes. The ‘edible’ parts are the leaves, which can be used to flavour steamed rice, for tea like infusions or as wraps for fish and, as I am holding them in my hands the flowers smell faintly of ginger…lovely.
It is also used in medical preparations in India in Ayurvedic medicine and ginger in general is well known to help control nausea and as a powerful digestive aid.

From the strange ‘beehive’ gingers to ‘dancing ladies’ and the heliconias, this family of plants is both beautiful and useful. If I had a garden here (and it would have to be acres and acres) I would definitely plant gingers and become a ginger expert.

There is an old Sanskrit saying “Adrakam sarva kandanaam” which means “Every good quality is found in the ginger.”
This is another useful phrase for the boring dinner party which will no doubt impress and alienate the other guests in equal measure. I am becoming the nightmare dinner party guest who can waffle on ad nauseam (better have that ginger dessert ready!) about things that probably only a handful of people in the whole world are interested in. Pedro politely describes me as very nice, if a little eccentric, (but then it won’t be long before the mother ship comes to collect me so I shouldn’t worry).

This little flower is a candidate for the next submission for the course, if I can find one in bloom in a couple of weeks time when I am due to start the finished work.
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Indian Ginger Flower

Leaf of the Day: 4 Coloured Leaves and Notes

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It’s that day.. that Friday 13th day, when sensible people stay at home and artists don’t pick up a paintbrush before noon.. but I have things to do and have braved bad luck… It is interesting that in Spain it was Tuesday 13th that was considered unlucky and I am still not sure why these dates in particular are so much maligned. Christan belief certainly regards it as unlucky, to do, in the main with the day of the crucifixion and, some say, with that first naughty apple-eating escapade in Garden of Eden which supposedly occurred on Friday 13th. However the Egyptians thought it was a lucky number so today I am with the Egyptians.

It would, however, be convenient if I could just blame all my artistic problems on various inauspicious dates but I know it really has more to do with my skills or lack of them. Since Monday I have been working very hard on the watercolour leaves for the course.
So far I get one done a day. I am trying to be disciplined and make a colour note sketch first, which is, I admit very helpful.. or would be if I could then stick to those colours. I have had problems with all of them..there are 4 more to go.

The two main problems are my lighting set up and, I think, the paper I am working on which is Arches HP.
The lighting is a nightmare. Rooms in these apartments here in Florida tend to be darker, dark is cool! I chose the lightest room to work in and it has a strong side light during daylight hours which can all change in an instant if it is cloudy (often). My model is propped, clipped, taped and balanced on various supports and stuck in wet oasis to get it into the right position to work from, but when the light changes it could be a different plant. The basil was a particular problem. I decided to get an extra lamp with a daylight bulb to get a constant directional light but that conflicts with the light over my drawing board and is a completely different colour from real daylight. The leaf or whatever it is I am drawing completely changes its colour and shadows, so I am still pondering this problem.
As to paper, one of the eternal questions of watercolourists is “which paper??”, they are all so different, and a surface and weight that works for a small subject and fine detail is then difficult to work with on large bold subject. Every artist seems to work on something different. I am a big fan of Arches for loose watercolour, but I am finding this surface somewhat spongy. It may be because I work back into the paper too soon before allowing the paint to dry properly, (impatience is another failing of mine) because I am finding problems keeping sharp edges and have worked over too much in some areas trying to achieve them.

I know I should have practiced working in such fine detail on different papers before wading in to the final assignment piece, but it is the nature of this particular beast to be a deadline worker. I pay for this of course by making mistakes but on the other hand there is a rush of adrenaline which sharpens up the senses and galvanises me into action.

Here are the leaves so far with their colour note sketches. I will be looking at lighting again tomorrow. Some leaves I redrew, as the initial drawings were not quite what I wanted or the leaves had died, (as the basil did!). The ginger leaf was the only one I had, so I needed to work quickly and, bless it, it did manage to stay alive for a couple of day… in the fridge, out of the fridge, in the fridge, out of the fridge…. at the moment there are more plants in there than food.

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4 Coloured Leaves

Leaf of the Day: West Dean Sketches

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Today I will be travelling back to Florida. Its Bank Holiday Monday and its raining here in the Uk. My two days in London have been lovely and fun. No drawing done but I still have quite a few sketches to post from my trip.

There is not much spare time at West Dean as the courses are quite intensive, but to take a break from the close and detailed work I made some sketches outside in the beautiful walled garden here. The shapes of the espaliered and supported fruit trees really appealed to me and I made some quick loose charcoal sketches. Also of some forcing pots in the rhubarb patch and a cyprus branch. It’s a long way from botanical painting but a good loosening up exercise. Of course now, having done these, I feel I want to get back to the oil painting… “when she’s in she wants to be out, and when she’s out she want to be in”….
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Walled Garden Sketches

Leaf of the Day: Lincolnshire Sketches

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In between gardening and having my second dentist’s visit I have been able to do a few sketches.
These three are of the village, one the huge horse chestnut tree by the village hall, an evening sky against the white may hedges and a clump of hedge with may and cow parsley.
It’s the prettiest time of the year… These are done on a small Kilimanjaro watercolour paper sketch book . Its the first time I have tried it and its a nice landscape 10″x 5″ with 140 lb paper. Very good for small sketches.

Leaf of the Day: Garden Sketches

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My plans for the next few days have been rather severely disrupted as I have had to make an emergency visit to the dentist today. The prospect of a triple root canal filling over two days has rather sapped my enthusiasm for life but the garden is pretty and I am trying to forget the pain and do some sketching.

First the old apple tree.. now, I think, almost completely hollow but still clinging onto life, the old village well, and the 5 sticks near the crab apple tree which I drew yesterday. It’s still practice in mixing green but I must admit that this miserable toothache has made me indifferent to what I am mixing. These are small sketch book pages 5 x 8″ on rather poor quality paper but it’s OK for sketching. I really like the 5 sticks.

Leaf of the Day: Frangipani Sketches

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My last post from Florida for a while and I am currently sitting in the departures lounge at Orlando airport surrounded by many many children, who all seem to have sprouted black ears and pink princess frocks.
I made these two sketches last week on my last visit to Leu Gardens where they have many Frangipani trees dotted around. I am most attracted to their shape, the limbs of the tree form rhythmic patterns as they grow and the leaves, bright new green, shoot from the very tips of the branches, feathery and delightful. There are some now in bloom and this was my first experience of the heady delights of the Frangipani perfume. The flowers are at their most fragrant at night and the name Frangipani is sometimes attributed to an Italian, Marquis Frangipani who made perfume from them, but although smelling lovely (a bit too sweet to my own taste) they do not have any nectar. The poor Sphinx moth who is programmed to respond to this scent, doggedly goes from flower to flower trying to find the nectar that the delicious aroma promises. Endlessly disappointed he carries on in hope, inadvertently transferring pollen from flower to flower. Quite a little minx this Frangipani!

The first sketch was made as I was walking round. I liked the new shoots so bright against the darker green background of shaded trees. I came back later to expand a little on the first sketch. Its a nice spot to sit, with a handy bench and a whole gang of friendly lizards. I will no doubt return to draw from here again…but for now its goodbye to Florida..my flight is boarding..
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Frangipani Sketches

Leaf of the Day: Leu Garden Sketches: the trials of greens

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Leu Gazebo Sketches.
These sketches were done over a few days at Leu Gardens..
(when I had finally found somewhere I was comfortable painting! As I said before, I have nothing but admiration for plein air painters) The next part of the course will be looking at mixing, and applying greens to botanical subjects so going out into the middle of lots of greens seemed like a good starting point. Also, as the pre-photo painter had to do, one should be able to produce a reasonable studio painting from information gathered from on-site sketches, without using photos at all, so this was another thought in the back of my mind for this week.

Initially I looked at tonal value. I have always found it very hard to convince students of the value of tonal sketches and I am sometimes lazy in doing them myself but they are so helpful.

This is the first tiny sketch I made as I went round the garden just looking at things I liked.

The next three were done two days later when I decided to concentrate on this view. The first two were done at different times of the day with different shadows on the gazebo and trees.

Morning

Early afternoon


Gazebo detail

The next few are colour studies. The first is my very first sketch of this view before I decided to use this for my greens trials. None are finished work and none are entirely successful but are useful to me. Occasionally an odd passer-by, no doubt eager to see a watercolour masterpiece, cast an uncomprehending eye over what I was doing. I just tried to explain that these are practise exercises ..like doing scales on the piano, a bit obsessive, a bit tedious, not really for public consumption but good for the practitioner ( I hope). I do seem to have some trouble in ever getting to the grand performance but that is not my concern at the moment.

The sketches vary in colour and tone but were very good for observing and mixing greens mostly from blues and yellows but with viridian too because I just love that colour… not a very strict scientific decision but hey.

1st Sketch, Monday

Matching greens

This one took a long time as I mixed and sampled each green to match what was in front of me, before putting it down. Although I say it myself it is a fairly accurate colour sketch. (I should have used better paper. It was just in my thin 70 lb sketch book paper )

These next three are just different colour ways with different green mixes.

Taking all these together now and applying some colour theory I should be able to come up with a reasonable watercolour sketch without having to resort to photos. I will have a go this week.

Other Sketches
I did find another view I liked and, inevitably, some more trees..

This is my favourite!

Leaf of the Day: Killarney Trees and a Little Blue Heron

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At least once a week I try to go and sketch outside and the weather is lovely at the moment so this afternoon I went to the lake to do a larger sketch of a clump of trees by the shore. I love working in charcoal, it is responsive and messy, a real welcome change from the waxy hard coloured pencils. This is 20 x 25 inches, charcoal and white chalk on a warm grey Ingres paper. I´m not very keen on Ingres paper and started working on the textured side by mistake which I like even less because of its mechanical looking surface but it was nice to work on a larger scale today.

I had the usual accompaniment of critics, jeering from the trees around me, mostly grackles which I wrote about before, perching sometimes just a foot way, all glossy and smart. When not screeching they have a disconcerting “uh oh” noise like some insufferable know-all’s ” I wouldn’t do that” comment, looking over your shoulder just as you are about to make a huge mistake. They sat by me, above me and below me squawking, “I wouldn’t put that mark there if I were you”, noises for about an hour. A pair of mallards was pottering about in the water at the foot of the trees, so happy and so sweet together.

The little ghostly blue heron was also silently patrolling up and down, quietly stalking its prey of dragonflies and little fish. Also known as the ‘levee walker’ it is the Italian greyhound of the bird world, delicate and fragile with twig thin legs, looking as though it has been carefully crafted from the finest and softest dusty blue suede. When you sit for long enough the birds come very close and I was able to do some more sketches of the heron.
This little bird is not so difficult to draw from life as it moves quite slowly and hesitantly and covers the same patch of floating marsh grass, up and down, delicately picking up its huge feet and gently placing them down again, almost walking on the water.
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Trees by Lake Killarney

Leaf of the Day: Moneywort or Dollarweed

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What a delightful little weed this is. It has insinuated itself into the plant borders and grassy bits of wasteland here with some success. You can’t help but appreciate its fragile qualities which are undoubtedly offset by its invasive and tenacious roots and its clever way of creeping along.. some roots and stems spring from the same point, then it must shoot out a runner and repeat itself and on and on.. It would be very interesting to see its progress in a time-laspse film
It is tiny.. the biggest leaves are about 1″ in diameter. The biggest leaf here is only 3/4 of an inch. The shape is peltate. I am going to draw a chart of the different shapes very soon.
I have a fondness for some weeds and this is one of them.
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Moneywort or Dollarweed