sketch – Page 9 – Pencil and Leaf

Cockspur Coral Tree Sketches

By Val Littlewood September 2, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

We are on serious countdown now, 12 days to go before we leave, 8 days before the boxes have to go and I have been reluctantly throwing away much that I have collected over almost three years.
So the nature table is no more. All my beloved pods and seeds and bits of twigs, bugs, fungi, dried leaves are gone.
A few things are lingering, things which I can’t quite say goodbye to yet, the potter wasp nest, some red seeds, a large bug and a little lizard skeleton.
I have also been wistfully looking through my photos and remembered my very first day at the Leu Gardens. I had taken a picture of the Cockspur Coral Tree Erythrina crista-galli in the Arid Garden.

I had not drawn the tree itself before, just a single flower head but I did write about it here, its somber legend and its “Cry Baby” name, given because of the abundant nectar which drips from its spur shaped flowers.
Humming birds love them.

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My photo in December 2007

Today I went back to have a look at it again. I am wondering if, in-between the commissions and the packing, I have time for a small painting so I made a couple of quick sketches from different viewpoints.
I didn’t stop for long as it was midday by the time I arrived and blisteringly hot…typical mad dog! Two black and white

and one with some colour

For me very quick initial sketches are a real help. They get rid of the “Oh-my-God-I-cant-possibly-do-this” fear factor and they begin to show me what really interests me in the subject.

For some reason I like the white planter at the front which has some little upright cacti in it.
Two and a half years on from my initial photo, the planting around the tree has changed and it has been pruned a bit more here and there, but it is still a lovely twisty shape.. maybe I will get a painting done.

Grey Skies and Ginkgo Sketches

By Val Littlewood August 26, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

It has now rained almost constantly for two days now, not much in the way of beautiful clouds or apocalyptic storms but just gloomy grey skies.
Have they been sent as a reminder of what the UK has in store for us?

It’s time to seriously sort out, throw out, sell up and pack. I am now being ruthless. It’s less than 3 weeks to go to our moving day.

However to lift my spirits a bit I have started thinking about my next commission which involves, to my delight, the wonderful gingko tree. I went to Leu Gardens a few days ago to collect a sprig of leaves.
They have quite a few ginkgo trees which I wrote about long ago, back in September 2008. when I drew three little leaves for “Leaf of the Day” see Ginkgo Leaves.

The leaves have been in the fridge and although not quite as bouncy as when I first brought them back, they are fine for sketching.

I hung the sprigs from my lamp to draw them.

The curious leathery leaves with their deeply ridged surface grow in groups from little nodules along the branch. Their flat fan-like shape and very long petioles allow them catch the slightest puff of wind and flutter so beautifully in the breeze. (I am reminded so much of the Cottonwood trees we saw up in New Mexico.)
The raised vein structure in the leaves themselves is rather odd, branching from just two parallel veins they repeatedly divide into two and do not join.

Sketchbook drawings, pencil 12’’ x9”

The Ancient Survivor When I first wrote about them I was fascinated to learn more of their ancient and wonderful history and I quote again this passage from the really excellent site The Ginkgo Pages, which really sums up the appeal of this tree.

“As the paleobotanist, Sir Albert Seward (1938) remarks: “It appeals to the historic soul: we see it as an emblem of changelessness, a heritage from worlds too remote for our human intelligence to grasp, a tree which has in its keeping the secrets of the immeasureable past.”

Dating back a staggering 270 million years, it rubbed shoulders with dinosaurs, in fact it predates them. It is unique, in an order entirely on its own, the Ginkgoales.

Once widespread over America Europe and Asia, it was thought to be extinct but the wonderful explorer, physician and naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer found it while visiting Buddhist monks in Nagasaki 1691.

He brought seeds back, planted them in the Botanic Garden at Utrecht where I think the ancient tree still survives and, talking about survival, it is one of the few trees that survived Hiroshima. I am struck that it seems glib to summarise the story of Darwin’s “Living Fossil” in such a few words.

So stop for a moment and ponder on those bald statements, the links to a time we can barely comprehend, the extraordinary journeys of the early explorers, the survival of some things which defy the most awful destruction dreamed up by man. It makes our little individual lives, our petty concerns and preoccupations seem so trivial.

Consider the gingko and be humbled! And do go and read Cor Kwant’s Ginkgo Pages!! More ginkgo tomorrow.

Life on the Ledge, more Sparrow Sketches

By Val Littlewood July 26, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

Yesterday morning I was delighted to see the sparrow nest had survived the night. It had developed quite a bit since the day before and was now a lovely shapely domed nest with a sheltered side entrance and not too many trailing bits.

But they carried on adding and adding. You just want to go out and say “Stop now!! It’s fine!! It’ll do!!”
But he kept the grass and twigs coming and she kept folding them in. You tend to think they know what they are doing but it was definitely beginning to look too big!
I sketched the nest at its apogee. Built up at the back to sit snugly in the corner, side entrance away from the prevailing wind, it was looking good, but now spilling right out over the ledge.

Predictably, I have now become fascinated by them and go outside and watch them. I made a few sketches of them perching on their ledge. The male bird was out and about more, stopping in between twig gathering trips to bounce along the outside edge of the parapet chirping furiously at everything and everyone, me included.

This little sketch perhaps shows what he was doing best. There was a lot of fluffing out of feathers and fluttering of wings and leaning right over to shout.

I was quite taken with all this machismo from such a little bird so I made a couple more sketches to work out a pose..

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Shouting from the Ledge

**POSTSCRIPT**
We went for a bike ride in the afternoon. While we were out a strong breeze whistled up from the south, turning the gap between the building and the columns into a wind tunnel.

Yes .. you guessed, the nest had blown away, again. The whole damn thing, every twig, every leaf. Hours of careful weaving, innumerable tireless trips to collect those strands of grass. The sparrows were back sitting on their empty ledge again.
Then down swooped the male and came back with a large bunch of grass. They are starting all over again! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!!

Sparrow Sketches. Waiting for Bonnie to Blow over.

By Val Littlewood July 24, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

Yesterday we caught the tail end of tropical storm “Bonnie”. It flew in and flew out spinning the pine needles, carving runnels in the sandy soil with torrential downpours and blowing away, for the umpteenth time, the sparrows nest.

The sparrows build their nest on top of one of the mock plaster columns which front the apartment entrance. We can see this little family and their comings and goings from our first floor kitchen window and I have watched them build and rebuild this nest a dozen times.
It was the same last year.

Yesterday it blew away three times, got tangled up in the nearby bush and was doggedly retrieved bit by bit, but “Bonnie” was, truly, the last straw.
She snatched the bundle of twigs and trailing grass and whisked them high and wide and away out of sight.
I have long wanted to record these very sweet little birds and yesterday while the rain and wind raged about, the sparrows sat disconsolately on the bare cornice of their home, sheltered from the storm and looking round for their lost nest. It was a good opportunity for some sketches.

Part of the nest must be tucked in the hollow of the column’s capital, enough to make it worth persevering with anyway, because, sure enough, this morning the sparrows are back, optimistically rebuilding and chirruping happily. I am thinking of suggesting a beginners course in structural engineering to them…more of this nest and the sparrows soon.

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Him…and …

Her….

…just sitting out the storm.

Mid Season Bee Flowers and Drawing

By Val Littlewood May 3, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

The sloth of sloth came to stay for a couple of days. He and I just wanted to celebrate it being May.

It’s my very favourite month…. But now back to the bees and flowers with only a short time left… So a few more sketches of favourite bee flowers.
Mid season is not so difficult for bees. I shall be adding the notes when they are all complete, but, as I sketch them, I am aware that they fall into certain families and perhaps, considering useful bee flowers by family, rather than individually, is a very good way to approach them, for example; Thistle family, Daisy family, Rose family, Lamiums etc, and, within those families are both “cultivated” and “uncultivated” varieties.

What is wild and What is not?
The more I consider the whole subject, the less clear I am about the definition of a “wildflower”. Many of the plants below can fall into either category.
I know the dictionary definition but it is strange in some ways that we grow Stachys byzantina “Lambs ears” or “Woolly Betony” in the garden but relegate Stachys sylvatica, “Hedge Woundwort” and the old medicinal herb Stachys officinalis “Betony” to the wildflower meadow, (well we would if we could find one).
Some of the wild varieties are just as beautiful as their cultivated counterparts, but maybe not so showy. When I was a little girl we would grow cornflowers and scabious as annuals in the garden but lovely delicate corn poppies were weeded out immediately.
My father is still not a fan of foxgloves (recent weeding altercation!) but loves wallflowers which are really just pretty mustard plants.
Then mustard then falls into yet another category and becomes a “crop”.
A crop which used to set the local fields ablaze with yellow.

The common yellow Verbascum thrapsus Great Mullein is classified by some as a noxious weed but is also related to the dainty garden snapdragon. Planning my imaginary bee garden is a complete nightmare of indecision and procrastination. But, I will know to plant things in drifts, choose natives and not to go for double flowers.. which I am not very keen on anyway, give me a simple single rose any day. And I will be annoying the neighbours by letting my dandelions frolic and multiply.

Stachys Lambs Ears and Cornflower

Scabious family and Buddlias

Dead nettles and Foxgloves

Wallflowers and Verbascum

If nothing else, these quick sketches are really giving me a much greater understanding of the flower families, of their wild and tame relationships and their usefulness to bees, both in the wild and in gardens.

Draw and Understand

As soon as you start to draw something you begin to see the similarities of structures and can understand why a bee will like both field beans and the common vetch. The great botanical art collector Shirley Sherwood said “ the best way to know plants, as every gardener knows is to try to draw one” it is good advice. As you are drawing you can’t help but make connections and see likenesses, much more so than looking at a photograph.

It’s trying to reconstruct something that makes you look so hard at it. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your drawing is, it’s what you have needed to observe, and the subsequent understanding which is important.
The act of drawing will also help you to remember the thing too. I wish more people would pick up a pencil just for the joy of discovery, but drawing is seldom really promoted like that.

Like many other things it gets bogged down in superficial slickness and the pressure to produce something that looks exactly like the thing, instead of a fascinating tool to understanding the thing.
I have to admit that I get rather wrapped up in the whole process and chat away to myself (only in private, so far) while I am drawing.. its usually something like; ”Hmmm so that’s supposed to join up there” or “ How does that shape work ” or very often..
“Oh Christ.. why did I do that!”..

Meanwhile Happy May everyone! I hope your bees are busy and your flowers blooming, better late than never!

“Buzz” ….Are we nearly there yet?… No.

By Val Littlewood April 12, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

I am just looking at the calendar.

I have a little over 5 weeks before I have to fly to the UK with all the pictures.
I now have 30 frames waiting there for me to fill.
I still have to organise the mounts (mats) but I can’t really do that until I have finished the paintings.

I have to write some blurb about each one, there are prices to consider, a catalogue even a simple one, hangings, fixings, numberings, a board with bee info, leaflets, the cafe, prints, cards and of course the horror of “promotion”.

“How many more bees???” “Is there an end in sight??” “Can we have something different?”

The trouble is that the more bees I paint, the more seem to line up asking to be painted.

How can I possibly leave out the long horned bee? How can I possibly ignore the winsome girdled mining bee? How can the set be complete without the beautiful blue ceratina?
The problem with learning about bees is that you get pulled into a completely absorbing and seemingly ever expanding family. I can’t believe that once I had doubts about finding enough interesting subjects.
I have finished and blogged 14 bees, repainted two 2, added 3 to the list.

Which means there are about 9 more to go making about 24 bee portraits.
My original intention was to include some of the cuckoo bees, and even a predator or two but there just won’t be time.
The other 6 frames will hopefully contain some watercolour sketches of just a few of the favourite bee flowers.

Its nice to think that they might be a bit quicker but that is not normally the case. However this week I must start them so… yes…something a bit different this week. Interspersed with the remaining bees of course. Meanwhile some snail shell sketches…as my progress seems rather slow they seem appropriate..

More Megachile..The Lovely Leafcutter Bee again.

By Val Littlewood March 18, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

I have written before about these delightful bees in my post “The Leafcutter Bee: Can Opener of the Bee World” so no need to repeat myself, and I don’t have much time either.

I have made a rather slow start to this next lot of bees.
But you can, and should, go and watch two wonderful short films by the BBC Natural History Unit of these amazing bees chewing round holes in rose leaves and transporting the huge pieces back to their nests where they form them into leafy cocoons for their little ones.The speed is quite astonishing.
The films, complete with cooing wood pigeon soundtrack, are on the excellent site Arkive http://www.arkive.org/megachile-leaf-cutter-bee/megachile-centuncularis/video-09.html.

Leafcutter bees don’t rely only on rose leaves but use also birch, ash, beech and many other leaves. (I have read that the serrated edge is significant but am not sure about it, but I can see how it might give them a good starting point).

Megachile concinna in Jamaica uses bougainvillea bracts and in the USA Megachile umatillensis uses evening primrose petals, how pretty!

There are several species in the UK but the most commonly seen are, Megachile centuncularis (the one I am painting), and Megachile willughbiella.

The Slow Megachile Painting Slow decisions… Day one… Tuesday

This particular painting has taken me an agonisingly long time.. mainly because I kept changing my mind. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to do, but now I have to consider the paintings as a set and make sure I get a variety of poses and compositions etc. My very first thumbnails done back in Feb were a good guide but I have already altered one or two.

First British Bee Thumbnails

I knew I wanted to include the rose leaves with the cut out circles because Megachile centuncularis is also known as the “rose leaf cutter bee” due to her partiality to roses.
So I made more thumbnails and initially chose to work on one with the bee flying away from the rose, mainly because I really wanted a more front face view. But, if she were flying away from the leaves, she should really be carrying a piece of leaf.

I pondered all this, spent half a day going down this route and then I decided against it. The bees carry the leaves clasped between their jaws and held with their legs which does to be honest, look rather strange, especially if this is your first encounter with a leafcutter bee.

So I changed the view to her flying towards the rose in eager anticipation of a bit of leaf chewing…I had tried the wings in different positions too but liked the anticipation of the forward position, they are almost like welcoming open arms.

I am a bit sad to lose the engaging front view eye contact .. but it makes more sense. Also, as I did with the Leu Gardens exhibition I will be having explanatory notes to accompany the work, so I think I will include a drawing of her carrying the leaf there. But it has taken me a day to get this far.

Slow painting… Day two… Wednesday …

At the side of the board is one of my boxes of bees with a little leafcutter under the magnifying glass. It’s a really pretty bee with such personality. Like all of them they take a full day to draw out and paint. So much work for something so small!

Slow drawing…. Day three… Thursday

I really thought today was going to be easy because all I have to do is draw the rose.. I went and found some rose leaves nearby, looked at my Leu photos for a nice single rose and then just couldn’t decide how to arrange them together.

I tried what seemed like a million different variations of flower angles and leaf arrangements.. these are just two which I was quite happy with, Up a bit…. down a bit …

But I eventually realised that I was uneasy with the scale.. so enlarged the rose a bit and then felt a lot happier but its now 1.30pm. sigh ..

My biggest problem at this stage is trying to keep everything clean.
With graphite pencils you do have to keep washing your hands and I try to remember to work with paper under my hand. Hazards are everywhere and cups of tea are usually balanced precariously next to me!

However it’s almost finished, perhaps I’ll add a couple more leaves at the bottom but it’s 5.30..enough for today or rather for the last 3 days! I am glad I turned the flower head up, its more optimistic and less watchful on the part of the flower.

While she is turning her head to the sky the little bee can come and help herself to some more leaf curls. Hmm… that smacks a bit of whimsy doesn’t it, a word I dislike intensely… blame it on hours of solitary confinement:

Little Miss Leafcutter off for some Leafcurls 🙂

Watercolour and graphite on Arches HP approx 8 x 8 inches

The Buff Tailed Bumble Bee and Clover

By Val Littlewood February 14, 2010 January 22, 2020 Uncategorized

I had to include clover in one of the bumble bee paintings because the bees are such crucial pollinators for this important crop.
Bombus terrestris, the Buff Tailed Bumble Bee must be one of the most common bumble bees we see in the UK, recognisable (as you might expect), by the Buff coloured section of the tail and its two yellow stripes which are a deeper yellow that those of the B hortorum.

I still have the small disintegrating sample which I brought back from the UK last year, which has been useful.

I sketched and wrote about it before, in regard to “nectar stealing” here. I won’t repeat myself but will shamelessly re-quote this delightful extract about bumble bee behaviour from the wonderful Bumblebee.org, which seems quite apt, given the date and may well strike a chord with some.

“I get a huge number of emails from people asking me why their bees are sick, when in fact they are just males who have spent the day chasing queens and drinking nectar and then stayed out all night. Sometimes it rains and they get soaking wet, but they will recover once they drink or get warmed up by the sun. Sleeping inside a disk or bowl shaped flower is a good strategy for these bumblebees as research has shown that the temperature at the base of the bowl, near the source of nectar, can be as much as 10 °C higher than the surrounding air temperature.

Happy Valentine’s day all! I hope the sun shines on you. It’s damn cold here I can tell you and not the weather for either man or beast to be sleeping off a hangover in a flower..

Good news for Bumble Bees in the UK .

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has just been voted the most worthy eco-project 2010, from the ‘Live For the Outdoors’ website and its Pembrokeshire path project, will now be funded with EUR30,000.
Pippa Raynor, the Conservation Officer who will be working on the project explains what they will be doing:

“We will be creating a wildflower-rich habitat to support rare bumblebees along a new 10km path in the Pembrokeshire National Park. By connecting key sites, this attractive route through spectacular scenery will help prevent the national extinction of the shrill carder bee.

The project will benefit lots of other wildlife too; Wales, like the rest of the UK, has lost most of its wildflower grasslands, so creating and restoring these habitats will benefit the plants, butterflies, bees, birds and other beasties that depend on them.
It will also create a lovely place to walk, with flowers and bumblebees along the path that takes walkers, horseriders and cyclists through areas that were previously inaccessible, thanks to the new route provided by the MOD.”

Sounds wonderful…Lucky Pembrokeshire! I am looking forward to the possibility of seeing and painting a Shrill Carder bee, they are really pretty! Meanwhile back to Bombus terrestris, 2 early sketches: In the second one I bent the clover head over a little more than the first.

And in the end I tilted it over a bit more still… these are fairly substantial bees after all. I may add the leaves later when I look at the set as a whole. No more time left today!

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Bombus terrestris: The Buff Tailed Bumble Bee and Clover

Watercolour on Arches HP 6 x 7 inches

A Short Break….

By Val Littlewood February 3, 2010 January 22, 2020 Uncategorized

We are going away for a couple of days so I won’t be blogging now till next week.

Jungle Island

We are heading down to the south of Florida and amongst other things, will be stopping by Jungle Island in Miami to meet up with Jeff who is in charge of horticulture there.

Jeff contacted me months ago when I wrote about The Wonderful Sausage Tree and the Perilous Bench and had linked to Tropicaldesigns.com.
They have quite a bit of information about Sausage trees on their site but also the fascinating history of how the “Jungle Island” site was developed after the old Parrot Jungle and Gardens were devastated by Hurricane Andrew back in 1992.

It’s so encouraging to realise that a major tourist attraction was planned with such care and consideration, from the plants, the subsoil, mulch, compost, choice of trees, irrigation, to the enjoyment of the visitors.

The Red Mason bee, Osmia rufa, first studies.

By Val Littlewood February 3, 2010 January 25, 2020 Uncategorized

I have started my next series, “20 British Bees” with this little bee,The Red Mason bee, Osmia rufa.

I painted a couple of heads a few days ago here. This is the one whose female of the species, along with O corniforns and O cornuta, has little horns on her face which she uses to mould the mud when making her nest cells.

These bees are really delightful and not as destructive as people think. They rarely make new holes in your walls but rather use existing holes. This is an orangey-red haired bee, and very similar to O cornuta but as far as I can make out, rufa’s last two abdominal segments are darker and rufa is the most common Osmia species in Britain.

These nice hardworking little bees will do for the British orchard what BOB Blue Orchard Bee Osmia lignaria will do for the USA’s fruit crops. If osmia lignaria is BOB then osmia rufa should really be ROB 🙂 Research has found that:

“One female Osmia rufa does the pollination work of between 120 and 160 honeybees. Another advantage is that even in orchards which already have honeybee hives, when these are augmented with mason bees, there is a demonstrable improvement in yield, fruit quality and shape. The same is true when Osmia is the sole or major pollinator. And importantly, mason bees are not susceptible to the Varroa mite. The Red Mason Bee is docile and safe with children and pets. No specialist training is required in their use and they are never a nuisance to neighbours. They are also fun to watch and, by providing them with nest sites, their conservation is encouraged.”quoted from Cropfosters from Chris O’Toole, Bee Systematics and Biology Unit, Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Just as there are commercially available nests for osmia bees in the USA there are also many companies in the UK who can supply nests, and I think cocoons. These bees will not be active for very long, just from April to June.

These photos below are from “Bees of the World” by Christopher O’Toole and Anthony Raw, where there is an excellent section on the Red Mason bee. The top photo shows some artificial homes, with mud seals put in place by the female when the nest is complete.

In these bottom photographs rufa is collecting mud and carrying it home in her powerful jaws.

“She uses mud to partition and seal the cells Several nesting females may find the same area of mud and their activities can create a distinctive hollow or “quarry”. She uses the horns to tamp mud into position when closing a cell.”

So look out for quarrying bees come April! Like other members of the Megachile family she carries pollen, not on her legs, but in the scopa of stiff hairs under her abdomen, see also Anna’s Megachile “Leafcutter Bee” here.

Interestingly,the above author, Christopher O’Toole, retired from Oxford University and set up the Oxford Bee Company whose products include bee homes and books about the Red Mason bee.
These products are readily available in the UK, and, if designed and approved by him, should be good!

The Paintings

IF all goes according to plan, the “20 Bee Paintings” and some accompanying flower paintings will be on exhibition in June. Things are still not decided yet but it means I have to get a move on. I am still deciding on format and size for the series, so this is a trial piece. Some sketches and trials..

Colour study, plus I have given her a nice nest hole in a wall with a handsome moustachioed mate.

And then I added some ivy as well, which I have just sketched in for now. I will paint a final version, once I have really decided on the layout size etc

This bee project will be three months of work.. I do hope you won’t be too bored! …but I do promise some flowers and other things as well!

Tag: sketch