DRAWING MY GARDEN

 

We've been working hard in our garden since we came back from England.  I enjoy the work and also the relaxation afterwards with a glass of wine when we sit back and enjoy the view!

 

 

It's fun to try and depict the shrubs and trees using coloured pencils in my current sketchbook filled with mi-tientes paper.

 

 

The evening sun in the south west shines through the leaves and paints the lawn yellow.

 

 

Working in the garden - Maree

In my garden, after a rainfall, you can faintly, yes, hear the
breaking of new blooms.
- Truman Capote

Black Pilot Fineliner pen and W&N watercolours on Visual 200gsm sketching paper

Aaaah, Summer at last! And that means some garden chores! My wooden garden barrow filled with Azaleas and two Terracotta pots, ready to be planted.

Another corner in my garden - Maree

"A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul."
-- Sadi

An old Terracotta pot on its side, a couple of Echeverias, three stepping stones, some indigenous grasses and river pebbles displayed next to my Tree Fuchsia (Halleria lucida).

Halleria lucida is an attractive tree and an asset to any garden, and it is also one of the best bird attracting trees. It is an evergreen tree or large shrub, often multi-stemmed, with a spreading crown and attractive glossy bright green foliage on arching and drooping branches.

The Zulu nation has a strong belief in traditional medicine and they use Halleria lucida for skin and ear complaints. Dry leaves are soaked in water and squeezed into the ear to relieve earache. This tree is also considered to be a charm against evil. The twigs are burnt when offering sacrifices to the ancestral spirits. The plants are set alight each year, the ashes mixed with crocodile fat and this mixture is smeared onto cuttings of Rhamnus prinoides which are then driven into the ground around the village to protect the community from wizardry and lightning. The wood can also be used to start a fire by friction. Halleria lucida timber is light coloured tinged with yellow, hard, heavy and strong, well suited to carpentry, but is not much used because the pieces are small. It was once valued for wagon poles, tools and spear shafts.

More from the garden

I can't seem to tear myself away from my garden these days. First, there's all that weeding and grooming to do, so there's a constant tug of obligation to yield to. But, much more fun is the equally compelling call to go out there and draw!
Here are a couple of recent sketches. More on my blog Laurelines.

My garden: May sketches

Where I live, May is the most glorious garden month. By summer, certainly by the end of June, the heat and frequent droughts we have here have turned out the lights in our gardens. Well, late September and October can be gorgeous, too, but we're not talking about them, are we :D.

I have posted a couple of other sketches from this series on my blog Laurelines.

Happy May to us all!

Tread Softly! - Maree

"Cares melt when you kneel in your garden."



A sign in my garden - A powerful message that needs no more words!

I just love little wooden signboards, and wooden bird feeders, and plaques for the wall or anything that I can hang in a tree - I made this little sign from a piece of left-over decking wood late last year and have been threatening to make a couple more, must just get round to it....

a bit of sketching . . .

a bit of sketching . . .
Originally uploaded by vickylw

. . . after a bit of gardening. I found wild morning glory with a strangle-hold on the Russian sage, and both basil and dill trying to flower (I grow them for cooking, not flowering).

I don't spend much time gardening, or even outside in the summer. Being extremely allergic to bug bites, I stay away from them as much as I can. The leaves from hens & chicks are to chill --- then use the sticky sap inside to sooth the bug bites I already have. It even helps with the itching.

A corner of my garden - Maree

.
"Tread softly!" a signpost in one garden reads: "Your feet are killing me!"



I sketched this corner in my garden just after a lovely down-pour last December - everything glistening and wet! While I was sketching, I noticed some weeds, but quite liked the look of them as they nestled between the rocks - so I left the job of de-weeding for some other time...

Autumn setting in - Maree

“Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.”
- William Cullen Bryant


"Autumn Garden" - In Moleskine Watercolour Sketchbook - 8" x 5.5"

Autumn is in full swing and the trees in my garden are slowly starting to change colour - this is actually a friend's garden on their plot here in Tarlton, South Africa, and I just had to capture her Japanese Maple in all its glorious orange splendour amongst her mostly indigenous trees. She commented that she never knew her garden was so beautiful and that she will be looking at it differently from now on!

Sweet Violet

This tiny violet is flowering in my garden now. It's native to Europe and Asia but also introduced in America. It has a wonderful sweet scent and is therefore used in perfumes. It has a beautiful deep violet purple colour (which is always fun to paint). Painted on Fabriano smooth watercolour paper. 9 x 8 cm

Spring Comes to the Garden

This was the last warm, dry day, and I took full advantage of it, sitting on the deck, having a fire in the chiminea, listening to migrant geese flying over...and delighting in tiny signs of spring. The snow has barely melted, the ground is just now thawed, and the crocuses were up already.

Gardens are nature, too!

Purists might object to garden sketches in such a forum as ours, but we ignore them. Don't we ? Quickly, before Kate can tell me not to, here are some recent sketches relating to my garden.

Garden Journal entry - Maree Clarkson

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

- Joseph Addison

An entry and sketch in my Daily Garden Journal

To me, the garden is a doorway to other worlds; one of them, of course, is the world of birds. The garden is their dinner table, bursting with bugs and worms and succulent berries. This is one of my feeding tables and the squabbles are hilarious to watch, with the Finches normally winning as they are quite feisty little characters.

Garden Bounty - Maria Hodkins

I've been eagerly watching the sweet corn I planted the first of June, waiting to pick the first ear and sink my teeth into its sweetness. I created a new raised-bed garden this Spring after tilling up the square of dirt that was the "floor" of my old, dilapidated chicken coop (that we tore down). This is the experimental crop, to test out the state of the soil, and see what will grow. Well, the one ear of corn on the end of the row that I've been intently watching, seemed to grow and swell a couple of inches from yesterday, and I could wait no longer. I gently pulled down the silk, and although the kernels looked small, they looked as though they could be mature enough to eat. So I plucked it! And then, of course, I had to find another similar one so that both my husband and I could have a taste. Meanwhile, I had filled a bowl with the 3rd picking of succulent green beans, and heaped a couple of ripe tomatoes on top. What a garden bounty to bring in for dinner! When I showed my husband, he said, "Well! you'd better paint them before you cook them!"--so I did. The corn, as it turns out, is still a bit too young, and shows as a pale yellow-white, but I wanted to keep the feeling in the sketch accurate to the moment, so I left it as is. It's still beautiful to me! (And delicious, too).

Western Colorado

Echeveria Something Something

Of course I threw out the tag, like I usually do. "Oh I will remember", I tell myself. "No you won't", says the other self.
And here we are... none the wiser.

This painting in my journal started out as a more detailed painting but by the time I got back to it, my mood had changed and it turned into a looser painting. Oh well.

Bills Challenge - Outside The Cottage

Bills Challenge - Outside The Cottage
Originally uploaded by linfrye

It was a quiet Father's Day yesterday - leaving me enough time to rest and to paint. I decided to give Bill's challenge a try (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorus_maver/3646005065/) since our next weekend is going to be rather busy.

This photo posed a number of challenges - lots of foreground detail, greens of all kinds, white flowers, the contrast of red poppies, and a low horizon line. I used several of my own poppy photos to vary and add to the flowers, some negative painting of the dasies, and masking fluid to get in the background trees - fun!

I LOVE scenes like this - woodlands and flowers, grasses and those wild places. It reminded me of scenes from Italy as well as the poppy fields the NC Highway Department has planted along some of our major roads.

And while I couldn't be sitting in that field, which I would have loved to do, the image itself and the painting of it, brought me a simliar summer quietness and memories of picnics, bees buzzing, and the scent of wildflowers.

Lin Frye
North Carolina

Courtyard La Romita

Courtyard La Romita
Originally uploaded by linfrye

Travel Journal
Plein Air
La Romita, Italy

So you see, it was very very difficult to concentrate on painting with so many friends coming to visit, so many sights to see, so much to do, so many gelatos to eat, so many photos to shoot...... sigh! LOL

This watercolor was done the last day we were at La Romita. So many of us sat in that wonderful Courtyard and painted the flowers and pots that we saw daily.

I saw many of these olive jars when I was in Sicily four years ago - and my sketches of them then (just prior to picking up a pencil to finally begin the process of learning how to draw!), are so funny ....! So I was glad to redeem myself with a better (not great) attempt at another olive jar! LOL As I was sketching, Karlyn asked me if I was going to include our ubiquitous laundy -- so there it is in all its muted glory! LOL

Our trip is winding down by now, and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it as much as I've enjoyed sharing and reliving it. It's hard to believe it's been over a week since I've been home. I told Rebecca over breakfast this morning that I was missing Italy. All she could do was laugh!

Lin Frye
North Carolina

Runner Bean Studies

I think my garden is full of grubs and weeds. That's it! I've taken to growing what I really enjoy in peat pots to get them going and to give them a head start before being swamped by weeds and cut down by the grubs. With them right under my nose I noticed, for the first time, how the beans develop (okay, I know that every first grader knows this but I've forgotten since then!)

Tiny Promises

I sketched this little guy while dinner was cooking. A new addition to the family. I haven't put the tomatoes in the ground yet, still kinda too cool and very, very wet at the moment. They are hanging out under the eaves, jostling for position. I guess for y'all down south, your tomatoes must be growing up a storm already!

Rebecca's Shed and Ivy-Clad Pecan Tree

Rebecca's Shed and Ivy-Clad Pecan Tree
Originally uploaded by linfrye

Daily Practice
Plein Air

I got to the B&B just before the storms set in for the night. I had sketched this scene last week of Rebecca's shed and one of her 3 ivy-clad pecan trees that tower over her backyard. I managed to paint three-quarters of it last night before I gave in to the constant thunder and sporatic rains. I moved my car around the front trellises and sat in it so I could finish the painting, despite the weather. I went indoors just as I finished the bed of iris and the rain was coming down in sheets -- just as it is this morning.

One more day of work! YAHOO! I'm back-to-back meetings yet again, with appointments running from 7:30 am until 7:30 pm ... so my computer time is limited once more.... but tomorrow .. VACATION begins!!!

Stay dry everyone -- we're in very bad storms with threats of tornados and lightning ....it should make a very interesting day!

Lin Frye
North Carolina