Tag: sketchbook

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: The Good Jicama..if just a little toxic

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Hmmmm…This is really not the sign you want to be confronted with when entering a vegetable garden, is it!

How can this be? The pods look every bit as inviting and edible as a runner bean at least. But here, growing in the Leu Gardens vegetable plot, in a big untidy heap of pods and leaves, is the Jicama, Pachyrhizus erosus.
The sign well is deserved, especially in this public garden, because just as it says, all aerial parts of this plant are poisonous. So I cannot really add this to my “eat you way round the garden” list and definitely not “eat your models” list, unless I was drawing the root, which I have to say doesn’t look too inspiring.

Image from the Root and Tuber Crops Section of the International Society for Horticultural Science. here

Jicama is a tropical vine which given the right conditions and a sturdy support can clamber a good 20 feet. A member of the Fabaceae (pea) family, it is native to Central America, where it is also known as Yam Bean or Mexican Turnip. Its botanical name “Pachyrhizus” means “thick root” and the colloquial name Jicama, from Nahuatlan Indian xicama, means “edible storage root.” Other descriptions include ” a dusty old stone”or “an inert looking blob”but these splendid edible roots can weigh up to fifty pounds, although those you may see at the supermarket are more likely to be 3 or 4 pounds. On balance I think it probably has a bit more about it than the average potato.
Its taste seems to be difficult to describe, somewhere between an apple and a potato, or a bit like a water chestnut. It can be eaten raw, boiled, mashed, fried or sauteed etc. Raw, it is crisp, slightly sweet, can be added to salads and used for dips….and it is the slimmers friend being very low in calories. I can’t understand why it is not at the front of every veggie display.

In its native Mexico Jicama is a staple food, added to many dishes and sold on the street as a snack, livened up with a squeeze of lime or a dash of chili.
It is also one of the 4 foods included in the Dia de los Muertos festivities, celebrated in November, the others traditionally being sugar cane, tangerines and peanuts.


photo by lacasa from Travelpod website here

It is the time when the beautiful and thoughtful altars are made as homage to the dead. Bowls of fruits are offered as nourishment and placed amongst other mementos, symbols and flowers as offerings, to aid the dead in their journey to visit the living. The Jicama is also celebrated in the form of the delightfully delicate papel picado dolls.

I think this is a wonderful festival, celebration and remembrance all rolled into one, reflecting the Mexicans robust way of dealing with death.
“The Mexican…..is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. True, there is perhaps as much fear in his attitude as in that of others, but a least death is not hidden away….” Octavio Paz 1914-1998

However if the death had been caused by Jicama poisoning you might not be so ready to include it in the plate of vegetables, but that is more likely to occur if you are a fish or an insect. The seeds of the Jicama contain Rotenone, a fish and insect poison. The Native Americans used the crushed seeds in their, perhaps less than sporting, fish-stunning, fishing technique, scattering the seeds on the waters surface and gathering up the immobilized creatures when the Rotenone has taken effect. Similar to the soapberry stunning I wrote about here in Soapberry, The Dark Side.
It is also used as an insecticide. Ant was noticeably absent from the drawing table this afternoon having been scampering about earlier. Yes, Ant is still with me, despite more attempts to encourage him to find a new life elsewhere.

The leaves are big, very big, I found a smallish one to sketch but this takes up the whole page of my 14 x17 inch sketchbook. I opened up a pod to draw, (not licking my fingers..) Its two sides were elegantly symmetrical with the tiny unripe seeds anchored like little shiny pearls in their spacious compartments, held in green chambered security, quite beautiful. As I was drawing, the pod sides began to twist and curl as they dried out. An hour on, it would have been more pleasing to draw .. but such is life.
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Jicama Leaf and Pod

Leaf of the Day: Bugs in the Paint #2 and the Joy of Easels

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Portable easels are like folding deckchairs and easy assembly furniture,they are treacherous, seldom really portable without your own dedicated sherpa, may fold, if you are lucky and are fingertrappingly unpredictable. If they are heavy enough to withstand a light breeze they are often too heavy to carry and then there is the tilt or not tilt issue. When you get a new one, it is advisable to try it out in the privacy of your own home. There can be nothing worse for your artistic credibility than to be seen by the public wrestling with your easel.. you can just hear the comments ” well if she can’t even get the easel up !”

I bought this … not, I have to say, the $500 “engineered by engineers” model, but something modestly priced that doubles up as a camera tripod too and tells me it is light and portable. So before setting off this morning for my new-resolution-plein-air-painting trip I thought I should try it out. I am not usually baffled but this took more than 5 minutes so resulted in a slight fit of bad temper. It’s a nice easel but has a stupid design flaw. There are two canvas support brackets which you have to fit…that’s fine..but when you come to fold it up, it does not fit into the carry bag with the supports still in place ….it’s all very boring, but it means that when you get to your location you have to re-fit these fiddly supports which themselves rely on a wing bolts and their accompanying small loose nuts…which of course immediately fall off into 10 inches of leaf mold. There are no spares… Another problem with this easel is that it does not tilt, which, for a watercolourist is a bit of a problem. I do have one that tilts but it does not fold down small enough for bike/backpack transport… sigh.. All I want to do is just go and paint something.

I have over the years had quite a few sketching easels and have never found one that is just right but now, as I have to cycle 3 miles to the gardens, the question of portability, weight, size, etc is even more important…then of course there is the question of the right backpack?… and then the right bike? I could go on for days.

Anyway I eventually arrived at the garden and had decided earlier in the week to make some sketches of the Soapberry tree and had, that day, made a quick pencil sketch and a small colour sketch.
The only reason for taking the easel is that there are no handy nearby benches, but I shouldn’t have worried about the public as this is a quiet part of the garden.


Initial pencil complete with muddy marks


Small 4 x 6″ sketch

There is an intention somewhere in my mind to make a series of drawings of this delightful tree. I enjoy working in series and sets and today I was just looking at the tree and the light. It’s a lovely time of year as the light is low in the morning but changes very quickly, so the few sketches I made reflect (somewhat) the shifting light. I made 4 small sketches and a some larger ones..I like some of them.


First sketch no sun


First sun on leaves.


More low sun


Sun hitting top branches more


Full sun on the tops of the branches

If I had to choose just one it would be this one below where the first sun is catching the leaves.
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Morning Soapberry

Leaf of the Day: Water Plantain ..of some sort..

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I have had a frustrating start to the week. I realised that the due date for the next SBA course submission was getting very close so decided to get organised. This time it’s a single plant “portrait” so last night I stretched the paper, cleared the decks and was ready to go and find my model.

I had decided some time ago that I would make a painting of the pretty white water plantain which grows in the water margins everywhere here… everywhere, that is, until you want one. After a whole morning of lake shore trawling and a bit of trespassing I ended up with only a couple of tatty flower specimens which are full of bugs, and some leaves. I was bitten to death by whatever horrible things inhabit the lake shores and got my feet wet feet because, here in Florida, grass is not always what is seems. It is often water masquerading as grass, no doubt there were leeches too. (Visions of the “African Queen”). This is all because since the summer rains, most of these plantains are just out of reach, just a couple feet from the shore…just two inches away from my fingertips… just too far …Sigh.

But to salvage the day I did start thinking about composition and made some rough sketches of the battered flower stem I have and a couple of composition sketches. It’s an important step and one that is tempting to miss out.
I am also having real problems finding out exactly what this is. It’s definitely not the “arrowhead ” which obligingly has an arrow headed leaf, although the flowers are the same. There are 3 or 4 different species which have similar flowers but I am almost sure this is Alisma subcordatum or it could be the Alisma plantago-aquatica the common Water Plantain. The thing that confuses me is that some of the flower spikes seem slightly different.
The scientific name “Alisma” is derived from the Celtic word for “water” and one curious colloquial name “mad dog weed” seems to come from the use of roots as a “cure” for rabies. If I get any madder today I will just chew on a leaf.

However, you can see why I would like to draw it, those simple flowers and graceful curving stem. It’s a dainty plant with its delicate white petals and round green seed heads so eventually it could/might make a nice piece of work. The search for a good specimen continues tomorrow….

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Water Plantain Sketches

Leaf of the Day: Blue Pea, Yellow Parrot Plant and Ginger

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Wednesday. I am painting the Blue Butterfly Pea vine Clitoria ternatea ( you can blame Linnaeus for the unduly explicit name!) and the Parrot’s Beak Vine and I also added some tiny Blue Ginger florets to the page, as the vibrant blue of the pea vine needed some balancing up.

The Pea Vine is the deepest velvet blue with purple tints. I used ultramarine and dioxazine violet. The colours look rather raw on the scan and I have no time to adjust them. It looks too blue here, and the original has a darker purple at the edges not black.

The Parrot’s Beak caused me endless problems in identification and I am actually updating this post on Sunday, as, having painted the wretched thing, I could not find any information about it anywhere. All I came up with for “parrot’s beak vine” was nothing like this flower. In the end I have had to cycle down to Leu this morning just to find the ticket again. It is the parrot vine but this one is Gmelina phillipensis Parrot’s Beak not Lotus maculatus Parrot’s beak which is quite different. It was a nuisance but turned out to be a worthwhile visit as I have found more very interesting things..including a rare turquoise flower.. quite amazing.

The little Blue Ginger florets are from the central spike of flowers of the Dichorisandra thyrsiflora. This is actually the spiderwort family not a true ginger at all but the plant has a ginger-like habit.

Its particular form of flower spike is termed a thyrse and as long as the growing conditions are favourable the thyrse will continue developing, adding flowers to the top. It appears that this is another flower which, despite not offering nectar, relies on bees for pollination. The flowers produce a food pollen for the bees which they seek by shaking the flowers. This disturbs the pollen and the bees receive both food and a dusting of real pollen. This is picturesquely called “buzz pollination”, more about that soon.

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Blue Butterfly Pea Vine, Parrot’s Beak and Blue Ginger florets

Leaf of the Day: Bald Cypress Knees and Lizards at Kraft Gardens

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Eerily beautiful and tranquil, the huge primeval, moss draped, pines of Kraft Gardens dominate this narrow strip of land on the banks of Lake Maitland here in Winter Park. It’s a strange place situated in a very wealthy suburb where great mansions and estates, many built in the 1920s, jostle for prime waterfront locations and moorings, so it is one of the few places that the lake shore is accessible to us mere mortals. There is a strange austere exedra too, built by the shore, where you can sit and while away an hour or two with a book. It has the lovely inscription “Pause Friend And Let Beauty Refresh The Spirit” carved in fine Roman capitals .

Nobody much will bother you but remember you are not alone here. Far from it. Should you feel a prickling of the hairs on the back of your neck it is because you are being closely watched by the many many creatures who live or pass through this little haven. Squirrels, hundreds of lizards, anhingas, ducks, herons, egrets, woodpeckers and ospreys will have seen you and be monitoring your every move. Initially you see nothing but gradually you become aware of rustlings, chatterings and dartings and, sensing something approaching, look out of the corner of your eye to catch a glimpse of a white egret or two strolling amongst the trees or squirrels playing. Every footfall scatters lizards by the dozen.
Yesterday, because it is nesting season, the great trees were alive with building activity, affectionate chirpings, squabbles and flappings. There must have been 20 egrets, some flying backwards and forwards with huge twigs, 12 very noisy anhginas, and 2 great grey herons. An osprey glided in from the lake with a big fish in its talons and perched high on a pine tree eating its prey. On the lake a pair of gorgeous mandarin ducks, so handsome and glossy, pottered about in the reeds making plaintive cheeps. They very conveniently perched on a raised nest box for a while so I was able to sketch them.

So today I am posting some photos and sketches from Kraft Gardens. I was fascinated by the “knees “of the Bald Cypress (taxodium distichum) which grow along the water line, they are the most extraordinary shapes. The Bald Cypress is a characteristic tree of southern swamplands growing in stagnant pools, and forming wide buttressed trunks, together with these strange woody “knees” which project from the water. The knees are outgrowths from the tree’s roots and it seems that they provide extra aeration for the root system. Clinging onto the knees are the wandering roots and leaves of the adventurous syngonium podophyllum the Arrowhead vine.

My favourites are the sketch of the anhihga in the tree and the waterlily leaves, both have potential to be developed futher. They are done with a Pilot pen the V5 which is soluble so to add a bit of shadow just wet with a brush. It’s a very useful and quick sketching aid.
My sketch book is 6 x 8 inches.

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Bald Cypress Knees



The Big Beautiful Sun

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One week on and the big beautiful sun has replaced the big ugly freeze. We live by Lake Killarney and this morning I went out early to see what was going on. The bird community was getting on with its very busy day. Immediately by the jetty there was a little blue heron hunting in the reedy grasses, a pair of mallards hanging around the boats and a delightful fat little moorhen who pottered up and down for about an hour. The large white egret was perched on a nearby mooring post and two of the beautiful anhingas flew down from their roost to snake their way across the lake, no wonder they are called the snake bird. They swim with their bodies so low in the water that only their long flexing necks can be seen. A huge flock of cormorants settled in the centre of the lake, seagulls flew up and down and the ever present big dark vultures were slowly circling way up in brilliant blue sky. The osprey I had seen a couple of days ago carrying a fish in its talons passed by high and fast and behind me in the pines on the shore the excruciating squeaky grackles flocked, flew and regrouped before dashing off. How wonderful to have all this just off the I4 motorway!
I was looking at the reedy grass to draw. It’s a marsh grass of some sort,
Maybe Salt Marsh Grass or West Indian marsh grass, I don’t think its Sawgrass. It was full of dragon flies well damselflies to be precise. I could see 2 types at least, the blue ones and the small red ones. I was going to try to identify them but was dismayed to read that there are over 500 varieties in Florida. Red and blue will have to do for now.
It was a beautiful morning. The water was so still the reflections were perfect.
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A few pages from my 6 x 8 “sketchbook. Birds are hard to sketch, herons are easier as they move very slowly as they hunt. here is the marsh grass, the moorhen and the little blue heron.

Leaf of the Day: Umbrella Plant

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Oh the poor umbrella plant .. unhappy victim of many a dusty airless UK front room. Here in Florida it thrives and is a sturdy and happy thing. This one lives in close companionship with the little oak, again at the bottom of my steps. Its just a plain green one. The Schefflera Arboricola. Its not so easy to draw. It is my first compound leaf, which really means I have had to draw 10 leaves, not just one. .
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The Umbrella Plant


the drawing can be bought for $40 plus postage