SUMMER COLOUR

 

My garden is awash with colour at the moment, mainly purples and yellows, so I just had to get out my pencils and do some drawing!

 

These pretty daisy like flowers make me smile when I see them next to the glorious purple hydrangeas.

LACECAP HYDRANGEA

 

Perros-Guirec where I live is famous for it's hydrangeas and this year they are fabulous, the colours seem to be deeper and there seem to be many more blooms on the bushes. In my garden I have a couple of bushes of the lacecaps which are rarer here than the usual mopheads but I love them for their dainty centres and the way the colour changes from a deep cobalt blue through mauve to pink almost before your eyes!

Hydrangeas

The town I live is nicknamed 'la cité des Hortensias' because the hydrangeas grow so profusely in the sea air.  I can't help being addicted to drawing them so here's one of my latest.  I picked all these flowers from one plant, aren't all the different colours amazing?

Autumn Hydrangeas

In this part of Brittany we get very few autumnal colours on the trees, mainly because the leaves get burnt by the salty air and dry and die before they get a chance to go golden.  However we are blessed with a multitude of hydrangeas all turning from their bright summer pinks and blues to deep reds and pale greens and all shades in between.  I've recently drawn this one as a birthday card for my Mother in law who loves the autumn colours.

Hydrangeas

Here in Perros Guirec, the city of Hortensias, the hydrangeas have never been so beautiful.  The colours this year are richer than ever before, I wonder if the upside down weather we've had this year has anything to do with it?  This lacecap is one of my favourites with lovely blue flowers peeping shyly out from her big green leaves!

Flowers, always! - Maree

More than anything, I must have flowers, always, always!
(Claude Monet)

My Hydrangeas are just coming into flower in my garden and this one sported two lovely heads of pink and lilac on one plant - I'm just wondering, was half the soil acidic and the other half alkaline...?

Mixed media - Black pen, W&N watercolours and Acrylic on a back-ground painted with Nescafé Instant, very strong! black coffee. I always have a few sheets of these with pre-prepared coffee back-grounds lying around, ready for a sketch.

More sketches from my moms property- Desiree

It is my birthday and I am feeling sad that my mom is recovering from surgery so far away. I had a glorious week with her before this big event so I am thankful for all of those wonderful moments together. This first picture is the view down the valley from her livingroom window. You can sit on the sofa and look all the way down the valley towards the ocean. On many days the marine layer lays low in the valley and the foothills and redwoods peek through . These days were glorious, bright and sunny.

This was done on my very large moleskine sketchbook as a double page spread. You can see some of the trees and vineyards in the foreground are beginning to change into their autumn apparel. In northern California, they do get the seasons but rarely have snow. The nights begin to turn chilly but the sun still warms the grounds during the day. The vineyards are busy testing the sugar content in their grapes to assure that it is right before picking. For many of the specialty growers this time of year is very stressful. If the rains come too early the grapes will not produce the sugars needed to become wine. Last year the rains came around Oct 20th and many late season varieties were lost. 

The hydrangeas are still blooming although looking faded and spent, their bouquets of flowers are beginning to look like they are starting to dry on the vine. My mom has many varieties of hydrangeas, lace cap, snowball, annabell etc. This first variety is called Limelight as the blossoms are a lime green and white. The huge, cone shaped heads are almost a foot long and stand in an arrangement for along time, they will even dry in place and still hold their shape and a lot of their color. The next variety is a lace cap, this variety was still blooming under the redwoods and is a wonderful mix of blues, lavenders and pinks. I brought home cutting from most of the varieties to start my own plants from, they root easily.

Hydrangea Macrophylla - Linda C. Miller

I started this piece with a cutting from The Elizabethan Gardens in the Outer Banks where I teach and then did a "photo" finish!   I used Prussian Blue and New Gambouge with a touch of Permanent Rose for the greens and the Periwinkle Blue was created with French Ultramarine and Permanent Rose - Winsor Newton.

I used a No. 4 Sable Series #7 Winsor Newton brush for the entire piece. I am amazed at how fine a line this "all in one" brush will make.  Honestly - you only need one brush to do the work that I do and it took me two years to find it.
Lace-cap Bigleaf Hydrangea
 Hydrangea Macrophylla
Specimen: The Elizabethan Gardens, 2010
Original Watercolor on 300 lb HP Paper
Size: 7 inches wide by 5 inches high

 

Linda C. Miller

Williamsburg, Virginia

Artist, Naturalist and Instructor

Hydrangea and one apple ~ Sigrid Frensen

Ok, I know, I'm a bad blogger, sorry for that. But to make it up here's an update. I was so busy these last few weeks to get my Hydrangea finished in time. And guess what... it's FINISHED!!!!! Yay for me :) I sent it to the National Herbarium this week and it went straight to the photographer from there. It will be photographed for the flyer and catalogue or something. Anyway, I managed to scan the big drawing (in 4 parts) and after merging the scans together, here's the result of all the hard labour:

I was so relieved when the drawing was gone I just had to do something fun and easy. So I bought a very nice red apple. Yesterday I sat down and in one afternoon (ok, and part of the evening) I finished the "Braeburn Apple" with coloured pencils. It was so good to do something with a simple shape and such rich, deep colours.

Don't know what I'll do now. Maybe I'll add one or two apples to that first one. It seems a bit lonely on the paper. And doing it was great fun, really....
On the other hand I'd love to do something with my watercolours again too. But whatever it will be, it's going to be small and fun :)

Journal sketch - Hydrangeas - Maree Clarkson

"The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting."

~Vincent Van Gogh

A sketch in my Feint No. 6 Daily Journal - some Hydrangeas, given to me by a friend, in my Vintage Hollands Pewter water jug standing on my kitchen table.

I didn't know, but Hydrangea, common names Hydrangea and Hortensia, is a genus of about 70-75 species of flowering plants native to southern and eastern Asia (China, Korea, Japan, the Himalayas, and Indonesia) and North and South America.

They grow extensively here in South Africa and flower over the Christmas period and in most species the flowers are white, but in some species (notably H. macrophylla), can be blue, red, pink, light purple, or dark purple. In these species the exact colour often mirrors the pH of the soil; acidic soils produce blue flowers, neutral soils produce very pale cream petals, and alkaline soils results in pink or purple. This is the caused by a color change of the flower pigments in the presence of aluminium ions which can be taken up into hyperaccumulating plants. Due to the high acidity of the soil (caused by lots of Blue Gum trees) on our smallholding, my Hydrangeas are mostly blue, unless I add some alkalinity, then I get the pinks.

Watercolour vs. Coloured Pencil ---- Sigrid Frensen

As you probably know, I work a lot with coloured pencils. I never liked watercolours very much... or the watercolours didn't like me... I don't know. Anyway, painting with watercolours always was a struggle and never fun to do. I found my coloured pencil more friendly and willing to work with me. Lately I started to paint a bit more. I think it was after the botanical art course with Valerie Oxley this spring. She showed some tricks and ways how to deal with various problems. It inspired me to pick up my brushes again and try some small things. You've seen the Blackberry and Redcurrants. They worked out surprisingly well. I have no idea why it is going so much better than before. Maybe it's because I take my time and use less colours when I mix my colours. Lately I've done two more paintings. One large and one small and still in progress. Actually I think I won't finish it this year because I have other, more important, stuff to finish too. To be honest, the first, large painting, isn't finished either... here it is:

These are the berries of the Arum italicum. Now, I must add that these berries are no longer floating around. I've added the stem last weekend. The bright orange colours were very new for me. I never did something so extremely orange before. The most beautiful orange I got from mixing Opera Rose with Cadmium Yellow (both W&N). Some berries have some Cadmium Red deep hue glazed over them, some have a bit of Opera rose or Cadmium Yellow glaze. The green was even harder. It stayed too mossy... too yellow... finally I tried to make it better by glazing with a bit of Hookers Green mixed with Lemon Yellow. That did it.

The other painting is going to be a bit of a project. I started it last weekend while I was demonstrating Botanical painting in my favourite nursery "De Kleine Plantage" in Eenrum. In the gardens were a lot of Hydrangeas. The most spectacular colour of deep dark red I found on Hydrangea serrata 'Grayswood'.

I picked some of the most interesting flowers off the shrub (naughty me) and painted them.

Now I want to paint a lot more of these flowers with these amazing colours on the sheet. Like they are sprinkled on the paper. I think it will look very nice.

Now, I'm not going to switch over entirely to watercolours. I love the pencils too. But it was a nice surprise to see the painting is going so much better now, with less struggles and with more fun than before....

Hydrangea Update

I'm still working on my Hydrangea drawing for the von Siebold project. It is so difficult. Really hard. I made some flowers first. Hard!!!

Then I thought it would be good to add some leaves. Harder!!!! And last weekend I was at the point where I had to make a big decision about the composition by placing a third flowerhead in the drawing. Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!

And it's not over yet... I have to do a lot of work still on all three flowerheads, I need to add even more leaves and the stems of course....
I've had some fights with this drawing, it has been the most difficult drawing I ever made.

I'm sure there will be more fights (and some more tears to go with it too I suppose) over the next couple of weeks. But I'm happy to say that I'm finally getting the feeling it might be a nice piece when I'll be finished.

White Hydrangea

I have a small hydrangea bush in the front that is so pretty among all the yellow daisies.

I brought a chair out there to sit and sketch one. I like using colored pencils on brown paper when the blooms are white.

I see Lin and I are on the same page today with hydrangeas. Such different views. Hers are so beautiful!

Von Siebold Project

At the moment I'm working hard on a drawing for the Von Siebold Exhibition which will be held in Het Von Sieboldhuis in Leiden. It's an exhibition about the plants Von Siebold brought from Japan to Europe. Drawings from that era will hang next to botanical drawings made by artists from the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. During this exhibition there will also be a special walk around the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden where a lot of his plants were planted when Von Siebold returned to Europe.

The artists from the society got a long list of plants in the Hortus. We all could pick one or two plants to draw. I picked the Hydrangea. It's a shrub I think I would never draw for fun. Too much flowers I guess. But this is a nice oppertunity to try something different. So I thought...

This Hydrangea is so difficult and it's a huge struggle. The sketching was easy and fast. I drew 3 twigs with flowers. The next stage was to make a good composition on the paper. The size of the image is the same for all artists (about 32 x 40 cm).

I tried out a little flower first to choose the right colours. That was ok. Now I'm working on my first big flowerhead on the bottom left. It is more blue than the little practice flower I did before. And after a few flowers the colours looked too dirty for me.

Now I'm trying a different approach: colours first, shadows later. I hope it will work.
Sorry for the bad pictures, I can't scan this and have to use my little camera and Photoshop. I will scan the end result though :)

If it will finish and not end up in the dustbin.