Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Wierd Tropical Plants - Liz Steel

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I am sorry that I have been so slack in posting to this blog in recent times. Although it is a while ago, we had a wonderful 6 weeks of Garden Sketchabouts in the Botanic Gardens Sydney... as per these previous posts.

The last week was a terribly wet day so we ended up in the tropical centre. In all my years of visiting the garden I had never been inside...and was I amazed by what I discovered in there. So many weird and wonderful plants!!! Even the leaf shapes and colours were unusual.

It was a bit of a challenge to sketch inside in the tropical centre glasshouses because the air was so moist that my paints were very gooey and occasional random drips landed on my page from time to time - everything got wet and I managed to get paint everywhere!
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This one, a tongue Orchid, native to Papua New Guinea caught my eye! Thankfully it didn't seem to be ommitting a putrid stench of rotting meats while I was sketching it!

Here are two links to more information... looks amazing when it is actually in flower
http://www.orchidsonline.com.au/node/651
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbophyllum_fletcherianum

If you are interested in seeing all my sketches from the 6 weeks of Sketchabouts check the full sketchbook here. The architect in me was drawn to many of the buildings in the gardens, or the vistas and I didn't actually sketch that many individual plants! It was the most wonderful event and culminated in a 3 day exhibition of the best 30 sketches, and we are very thankful for the Gardens to have the vision to organise this event.

1 comment:

  1. wonderful sketches--and I love that you persevered in this indoor jungle to get your painting/sketching done.

    ReplyDelete

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