CANDLES IN THE WOODS

 

In our part of the world one of the native wild flowers is the Navelwort, which starts growing it's round leaves with a navel in the centre early in the year.  In late spring the flowers appear and as it prefers the damp shady soil in the woods they flourish and seem to last for ages.  We see them everywhere on our walks, especially as we favour the cool places during the summer and I was reminded of candles as they glowed in the fresh greenness.  I sketched this yesterday in memory of my sister whose birthday it would have been.

WILD FLOWERS FROM NORTHERN SPAIN

 

We've just returned from our summer trip to the north coast of Spain, a beautiful area with rocky coasts and an abundance of wild flowers.  I picked a bouquet of at least 16 varieties and drew these 4 as they were the most unusual.  The yellow one on the left was on the roadside, growing about 2 to 3 feet tall with these strange flattish pods with a small orange flower coming out of the top.

 

As you can probably see I have only named 2 of them and I would love to learn the names of the other 2 so if anybody can help please let me know in the comments.  The white one here on the right grew about a foot tall in a group on it's own.  All drawn in Museum pencils in my mi-teintes sketchbook.

Northern Wild Flowers

This is a small study of northern wild flowers in pen & ink and watercolour. Of course there is still about 4 feet of snow here.  It usually starts to melt in April.  So it will be a while until I can go out gathering flowers to bring home to paint.  I used some photographs to paint this little group, even though I was not able  to go into nature to gather these ones I still like to paint a group of flowers that are from a similar habitat.  Starting on the left the yellow flower is Arnica, which is a very widely used medicinal plant.  In the middle is Pink Wintergreen, called "winter-green" because it is one of the only brave little souls that keeps it's green leaves all year round even when it is buried deep beneath the snow. And the flower on the right is a purple Marsh Violet.  I always get so excited when the violets come out in May here.  They are one of the first wild flowers to bloom.  Other common violets around here are the yellow Stream Violet and the Early Northern Violet.

What are the first types of wild flowers to bloom in your area?


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Wild flowers down our lane

 

I took a stroll down the lane at the end of July and came home with a wonderful bunch af wild flowers, ferns and grasses. 

 

It took me quite a while to draw them all but I really enjoyed my afternoon.

 

Imagine my surprise the next day when the local council came along with their cutting machine and started outside our gate and completely cleared the verges and banks of everything over 6 inches high

 

 

How lucky I went when I did, there is nothing left now except some very sad looking grass!

August Wildflowers

Not really painting in nature when I'm in the comfort of air conditioning but, definitely painting from nature :)

The wildflower garden at work takes my breath every time I pass by. I'm torn to stop and paint but... you know how it goes... getting paid to do other things than paint :)

I couldn't stand it anymore and picked a couple of sprigs of Brown-eyed Susan and Ironweed. I brought them back to my office and  for the last two days, my lunch break has been filled with watercolor sketching.  So refreshing!  Now I'm ready to tackle the brochure design project for our upcoming season of events :)

A walk in the New Forest

We spent a few days in the New Forest in Hampshire on our return journey from Sweden.  We took a walk from Beaulieu to Bucklers Hard through the woods and fields and were blessed with a beautiful day.  I collected a few flowers along the way to draw later.

              My sister in law found this lovely feather which I drew later in coloured pencil.

The forest is a large area of open land where ponies and cattle roam and graze freely.  Great care is needed when driving around and every village has it's cattle grids to keep them from the houses!

Swedish wild flowers

I collected wild flowers to draw everywhere we went during our 3 weeks in Sweden.  I found many I already knew but the pink one on the right side of this spread is new to me.  It looks like a pink with the same type of stems but they are sticky and collect insects and tiny spiders.  They grow everywhere on the side of the roads and make the motorways a pleasure to drive along!

These harebells were growing outside my childhood holiday home in exactly the same place as 60 years before, but I didn't see them anywhere else!