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 ? ..
