Jaded!

After another week working on the vine, I was feeling more than a little jaded! It's not far off being finished but by Friday I was pretty weary of it and unsure of whether or not it was heading in the right direction. So the decision was made to take a break, and, by way of a change I spent a couple of hours painting a butterfly on vellum. Beginning right in the centre of a sheet of Kelmscot vellum with the Swallowtail. Papilio machaon is one of our largest and most beautiful butterflies here in the UK. It is also one of the rarest and can only be found in the fens of the Norfolk Broads where the sole food-plant, Milk Parsley is present.

The Swallowtail, Papilio machaon on vellum

I really enjoyed painting the butterfly, particulary those red spots, and I think I must have been craving some other colours....it was good to get away from the turquoise for a while  Sometimes it's best to walk away from a painting when it gets to this stage. A painting (and painter) seem to go through various stages, from the initial enthusiasm with the washes, then it slows right down as the layers build, the detail stage and finally the finishing. This final stages can sometimes cause a bit of anxiety for me, when I start to question whether I could have done things differently, of course it doesn't matter because what is done is done.  At this stage I take a break and also photograph the work to explore it in detail on the computer screen, this helps me to see where more work is needed. I also turn the image to black and white in Photoshop to look at the values and play about with levels to see how the tonal values could be improved upon.

A black and white view helps me to identify where work might be needed regarding  the tonal values.

The colour of the jade vine is a very difficult one to depict because it varies so much across the plant, from green to turquoise and blue to purple. The flowers becomes more blue and purple as they age. This bizarre colouration is known as copigmentation which is due to the presence of the anthocyanin, malvin and saponarin. The flower has a different pH value inside in the colourless tissue compared to outer petals where it has a higher alkaline pH and this alkaline pH is is believed to be responsible for a reaction in the saponarin which creates the unique turquoise colouration. I tried to address the unusual colouration by layering glazes of different transparent colours and by adding a small amount of gum Arabic to the glazes to maintain the luminosity.

Tricky colour, layering of glazes and the addition of gum Arabic helps to maintain transparency

Tomorrow I shall try to finish the vine but have teaching work and other jobs to finish first, whatever happens, I have to be finished by Monday when it goes to the photographer. I've enjoyed doing it but these larger paintings (this one and the previous fritillary) require a lot of concentration. I try to paint or draw everyday and think it's important to do so but when working on the same piece for extended periods it can be tiring and I can lose sight of what I'm trying to achieve.  The butterfly painting is something I've had planned for a while and provided a much needed  break, once the jade is finished I hope to add at least one butterfly per day and aim to have at least 15 butterflies on the sheet of vellum.... the temptation of some small works and learning about each butterfly will hopefully help to drive me towards the finish line!

The latest version of the jade.....more over the weekend

Out with the Old and in with the New Year

Having woken up on New Year's day with the cold from hell, I was feeling more than a bit sorry for myself. But there's always an upside to everything and being confined to the armchair provided a good opportunity to reflect and plan for the year ahead,  and, to do a bit of sketching.

Let the sketching begin! Crow skull, graphite on Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook paper, life size. 

Initially I thought I hadn't achieved all that much with work over the last year but making a rough plan at the beginning of the year and reviewing it at the end is very useful.  I won't be beating myself up too much about the 'incomplete things' - it was a hectic year! Life events tend to drain energy, time and money but things settled mid November 2014 when I finally started to put down some roots again. Now that I have somewhere to work and the Festivities are dealt with the time has come to get stuck into some serious work but I feel the need to warm up first with some sketching. In fact sketching has been elevated to the number one activity in my New Year resolutions! 

Roe deer skull, Graphite. Life size study A4 Stillman & Birn Zeta Sketchbook. Completed using the hatching.

The sketches don't necessarily have to be botanical and it's sometimes better if they're not - other subject seem to help me to loosen up the drawing style. I made a start on some old skulls, they're very good subjects, as are seed pods and shells, dead insects etc. .... you see they don't move or wilt! The aim is to work fairly quickly on these sketches, always from life .....and done on a regular basis. Sketching and tonal drawing is all important,  and a botanical painting is pointless if the drawing is off and the tones aren't there.  My daughter, Polly, is home from University too so she's been joining in and yes she's got a blog too!

Looking Back

Having had a good think about last year and looked at the positive things as well as the things I could have done differently it's not been so bad!  I'd forgotten half of the things so trawling through the blog made me realise that more has been achieved than I originally thought.
 Painting and drawing is my job. I teach people, sell original work and illustrate all sorts of weird and wonderful natural things, from rice packaging to the internal structure of a bony fish! It's a notoriously unstable and slightly chaotic work choice, particularly if you're a solo act. Sometimes it's hard to make the best decisions because I'm torn between what I want to do and what I have to do but wouldn't change it for anything else in the world. This career choice means that I have to work hard, plan well and be organised. It's not just about painting either, there's some serious multi-tasking including, promotion, websites, book keeping etc. etc.

RHS Show Orchid Show in April at the Lindley Hall. Great fun but unprepared!  Photograph courtesy of Alena Lang Phillips

Last year I wasn't terribly organised when I committed to the April RHS show, I had applied for the October, Shades of Autumn show - but for some unknown reason I ticked the box selecting the London Orchid Show as second choice.... That was my first mistake! Never put a second choice if you haven't got time! I've done 5 RHS shows since 2004 and always applied for London as first choice but never been allocated it, so felt I had to do it when it finally came my way. 

Behind the scenes the frantic preparation! before the plants die

 Other work commitments meant I was left with just a few weeks to paint 6 works on vellum...it wasn't the best idea but it was 'do-able' if I kept it small and simple. That was a criticism by judges, they wanted more like this one, and less of the simple studies. It went a bit wrong at times and I didn't have time to present them properly either, but I got them all finished and made it to London. I have since done a bit more work on some of them and mounted and framed the the unsold ones. 

Fritillaria meleargris, exhibited at the London Orchid show

It was a great experience and I enjoyed it enormously, met lots of lovely people, many of who I've only ever communicated with via email. I was awarded a Silver and sold two of the paintings but I know that more time is needed to prepare for such high profile show and so I learned from it. Long term planning is the key and it's something I need to refocus on after the upheaval of the last 2 years. If I ever apply again I'll prepare the paintings and then apply for space when and only if I'm happy with them.
 

From the Royal Brompton and Harefield Exhibition flier

I also managed to exhibit 16 paintings at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital Trust with my good friend Julie Whelan. A fantastic opportunity, thanks to Julie. Arts in hospitals is a great initiative, it brings a diverse selection of work into the hospital environment for the benefit of both patients, visitors and staff, and, with commission going to a good cause! We dropped off the paintings at the hospital and were given a tour of the old world famous Harefield, they have some super work in their collection including a beautiful urn by Grayson Perry. The paintings went on to be exhibited at the Royal Brompton until November.

Planning Ahead 2015
The new workspace is sorted and reasonably comfy,  so I'm ready to roll! I've had a clear out of materials and invested in some big vellum skins and other materials.....so no excuses for slacking! This year I want concentrating on more complex works in graphite on paper and watercolour on vellum ( although I reserve the right to change my mind at any point).  Here's a bit more drawing practice underway.... just! I drew this rather complicated rough composition of bindweed during a trip to Germany in the late summer, decided to dig it out today as practice. I have to work from photos and some dried specimens, not my favourite approach but I want to finish it. Hmmm....it's going to be quite challenging!

A bit more drawing!

......do you ever wish you hadn't started something! I'm working on Arches HP, size 18 x 24 block. I like this paper for graphite work but not for watercolour. It took an age to plan the composition but it will no doubt take much longer to complete. I can 'chip  away' at it when I feel like it tough as I'm only left with photo reference and a few dried specimens now. Who knows it may well run into the next flowering period!

Fortunately I took hundreds of photos! and captured quite a few mini beasts

.....and collected dried bits of the same plant from behind the shed at the bottom of my daughters garden!...I trod on a nail to get this!

Basically I want to keep drawing and painting this year to make up lost ground. Sounds obvious but putting together a body of work that I'm happy with is important, it won't be for any particular purpose, no specific exhibition or show and I'll decide what to do with it when it's complete. I won't be working to anybody else's criteria. Something to plod on with in the background and with the subjects I choose.

The Exhibitions Calendar ... OK what's achievable? 

I'm spending time researching the exhibitions calendar for the next few years. I hope to submit work for this years SBA Annual Show, In Pursuit of Plants. 
It's 3 years since I last did the SBA show and I aim to submit just one large piece on vellum.
 
Back in May I wrote about the Jade Vine painting. I'm almost ready to send off the digital image this month for the Sydney Florilegium Exhibition, which takes place next year at Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.  I've worked on this over a two year period after tracking down the plant at Kew and Durham Botanic Garden.

I visited Kew to observe the amazing jade vine earlier this year. 

Work in progress. The finished painting will be scanned and sent as a digital image at the end of Jan, that's for the for printing. The original will be packed off to Australia shortly afterwards.

Teaching and Websites
Over the last few years I've written a number of online courses,  it's great fun and I have some lovely students. It's a constant learning curve for me as well as for the students and it's important to learn from their feedback. The materials are delivered via a dedicated course website, which I constructed and manage and we have a private Facebook group too. This year  I'm undertaking some new materials on Composition as well as adding to existing courses and developing things a stage further.....gotta keep up with the technology!

A video still from the  Botanical Watercolour Course

 My method of teaching, I hope, looks at the fundamental techniques and theory behind drawing and painting for the botanical student. It's not an 'easy option' approach and requires hard work but I believe it's an approach that will give students the building blocks that they need to develop their own style and to work independently as artists in their own right beyond the course. 

A still from the Course website

Blogging Birthday Ahead!
On Jan 18th I will have been writing this blog for 6 years! There have been some gaps over this period,  initially it felt like a bit of a waste of time - there seemed no way of finding others with the same interest but the amazing Sigrid Frensen found me and was thinking along the same lines. Sigrid had started a Botanical Art Facebook group, which I later joined as co-admin. It now has over 2000 members! So the whole Botanical digital world has grown enormously in the last few years and it's much easier to find people, and, there are now lots of amazing botanical art blogs to read. Writing the blog  is something that I really enjoy, hopefully others find it useful too and it's a brilliant way of keeping a diary for me..... I'll need to think about some way of celebrating!

Continue with the Sketchbook Project 
See my previous blog post. This time next year the project will be coming to an end and I'm very very excited to get my book back!

Finally... see more of the World and Exhibitions
One of the things I've pursued this year is travel, something that I hadn't really done a lot of up until a couple of years ago.  I've seen lots of exhibitions, including most recently the Picasso Expo in Brugge, also the Dali exhibition.  I've visited many galleries at home, looking at a wide variety of styles, from the fantastic Shirley Sherwood Collection and Marianne North at Kew, to Andy Warhol at Tate Liverpool and Turner Prize winner Martin Creed at the Hayward. It's something that has been invaluable.....diversity is definitely good for the mind! Travel has also given me the opportunity to draw and sketch plants away from home and in the field. Here's one from earlier in the year from a trip to Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

Linaria vulgaris, sketches

 I'm travelling to Donegal in a couple of weeks so will see what I can find there to paint....there's always something to paint no matter where you are, whether its from the back garden or further afield.

That's about it for 2014 and the rough plan for 2015! 

The Jade Vine

I don't often paint exotic or big bold plants! But things change and last month I started work on a larger work with the Fritillaria imperialis. It's a plant I've always loved but never had the nerve to try. I thought I'd probably never paint my favourite 'big' plants..... in fact it almost felt as though I couldn't or shouldn't paint them because that's not normally what I do. Last year something happened that got me thinking about new subjects when Beverly Allen invited me to join the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney  Florilegium Project. I was sent the plant list which was slightly daunting because many of the plants were not familiar subjects. I was immediately tempted by the Jade Vine, Strongylodon macrobotrys, and claimed it without giving too much thought to the scale of the job! Since that time I started to think about other appealing 'big' plants and have now compiled a short list  of plants that I really must try to paint while my eyesight isn't too bad...... more about that later. Here's my first effort and its story so far.

The Jade Vine is a member of the Fabaceae family - the nitrogen fixing legumes or peas and beans. It's a big woody vine! There's nothing else quite that colour in the plant world, it really is 'jade' or turquoise in colour and once seen is never forgotten. The colour is caused by the presence of the anthocyanin, malvin and the flavonoid, glucoside, saponarin. Together the cause this copigmentation. Apparently at night  the flowers look white, almost luminous! and like many white flowers it is pollinated by bats. It's native habitat is in the damp forests of the Philippines. Sadly loss of habitat has caused its decline and it's now considered endangered. 

I tracked down a specimen at Eden last year but was too late to make a start, so had to wait to visit Kew and Durham Botanic garden in April this year. I made preparatory sketches and was fortunate enough to collect the fallen flowers too (with permission form Durham). I returned home with colour studies, sketch book work, flowers and hundreds of photographs! Working from photographs in this way is a bit of a departure for me but it works OK if you've done the background research.

Beautiful Jade Vine at Kew

 

Fallen flowers. The colour changes from the jade green to a more blue and purple shade.

 It's going to be a bit of a long haul but after over a year waiting it's finally underway. This type of work can't be rushed and will no doubt take several months to get to the final painting.

I started by drawing out the plant in detail and painting in the supporting structure. The stalk has an underlying yellow/ green colour with a fairly dark purple on top. I used Green Gold for the first wash and a mix of Violet Dioxazine and Paynes Grey on top. 

Getting the structure in place

Thereafter I began to add the first wash to the flowers and found a mix of Winsor Blue Green Shade and Winsor Yellow worked well as a base colour. I also added some Violet Dioxazine for the older flowers and a little Manganese Blue Hue as a glaze in places.

First washes to the flowers

I'm currently starting to add detail to the flowers. But this is just the start of the job really. There's a second flower spike and the woody vine and leaves to add yet.....It may take some time!....and perhaps I'll forget the big plant paintings idea!

Slow progress

The work needs to be finished and delivered for the Florilegium project by March 2015.