SILVER BIRCH BARK

My silver birches have beautiful bark and looking carefully I can see quite a few different colours, sketched here in Derwent drawing pencils and graphitint on crumpled watercolour paper.

My next step is to interpret the drawing in textile,  here using silk and organza appliqueed onto a cotton background and hand embroidered with yarns and threads.

Journal - Persimmons - Splash and Splatter - Lin Frye, NC

Journal - Splash and Splatter - Inspired by the season's persimmons.

Christmas Rose or Poinsettia

Perhaps you share the same poinsettia experience as me? You buy this lovely plant weeks before Christmas as an eye-catching floral display. You like their fragility and you love their thin lush leaves. Come Christmas and these delightful poinsettias start to die on you. Perhaps you wish, like me, to keep your poinsettia alive for longer?

Every year I find myself in doubt whether I should buy poinsettias. It is actually madness to buy a species in the Netherlands that is indigenous to Mexico. Having said that, I also buy cacti and they aren't native to the Netherlands either, but because they are real die-hards, they do well. However, buying plants that start to dwindle within weeks goes against all my environmental low-carbon-footprint principles. It also conflicts with my idea that I should only buy plants that will flourish in my home or garden. In other words, should I stop buying them? Perhaps, yes. But should I succumb to their attraction, I have found a website that gives advice on how to keep this plant healthy and even flourishing the next Christmas. Perhaps this advice (click here) is helpful for you too.

Paula Kuitenbrouwer

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SKETCHING TREES

I've just started a new project to draw the trees in my garden, starting with my silver birches.

One morning this week the sun was shining through the raindrops on the delicately hanging twigs in the front garden, making them look like fairy lights

.I crumpled some pastel paper and used Derwent drawing pencils to make the sketch then added the raindrops with a watersoluble pencil dipped in water.

The bark of these beautiful trees is full of unexpected colour and I really enjoyed drawing this using some Graphitint pencils that I had forgotten about for years.

Journal - Looking Glass Falls - Version 2 - Lin Frye, North Carolina

Journal - Decided to try a second version of these beautiful falls in the Pisgah National Forest.

Journal - Looking Glass Falls - Lin Frye - North Carolina

Journal - Looking Glass Falls - Version 1, Pisgah National Forest, NC

Travel Journal -Blue Ridge Parkway - Lin Frye - North Carolina

Travel Journal - Despite the rain and cold that followed, we had one glorious day to explore Pisgah National Forest, see some amazing waterfalls, watch an adventurous fellow brave 50F weather to glide down the cold waters of Sliding Rock, and drive the Blue Ridge Parkway.  This is one of the views we had...