Sunday 14 December 2008

DECEMBER GARDEN PLANT SKETCH

You may remember I had a beautiful sketchbook made for me to record flowers from my garden and it turned out that once a month seemed to be the order of the day - so for December I noticed there was ivy- two types - holly and periwinkle which was in bloom and rambling around the pole and area where we keep the dustbins!!!!

As usual you can enlarge by clicking.
This is the double spread, which looks a bit muddled, but it grew as I worked on each plant piece and finally added some penwork to fill the gaps!! The bottom two coloured variegated ivy looks a bit heavy but I think that was the use of naples yellow for the creamy inner areas. Think I should have picked a bigger piece of this to improve the composition, but there we go.
Here is the spread split into pages for more detail:
left hand page showing the colours I used - mostly Winsor and Newton or Senellier.
This is the right hand page of the spread and as there were two types of ivy, I decided to do the more common one in pen only behind the colour.
So that ends my monthly efforts for 2008 and I look forward to the snowdrops to start next year's entries.

8 comments:

RH Carpenter said...

The unpainted areas add a nice touch to this. Beautiful! Have a wonderful holiday season.

Sandy Maudlin said...

It's great to be able to enlarge the pix to study them. I find leaves one of the hardest things for me to paint, along with birds' feet. Seeing your color choices and how great the results end up is inspiring and helpful. Merry Christmas!

Anita Davies said...

Beautiful, seasonal entry Joannie. Love the berries on the close up!

Joan Sandford-Cook said...

Thank you dear blog friends for your interesting comments. I personally was disappointed in the overall outcome but pleased with certain aspects especially the berries and the addition of the pen work.

Claudia said...

Joan, this work is fantastic! (I know, I repeat myself, but it's really well done!) I like the pen drawing behind the watercolour and I love the subject you chose and how you painted all these plants. You could use the right hand page of the painting right away for a splendid Christmas card! It makes me thinking about painting more again (after all that knitting ,-))

E-J said...

Gorgeous spreads, Joan!

In answer to your question about posting a photo mosaic of little squares, I did it over at flickr.com, where my images are hosted. There's an application called Mosaic Maker http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php which enables you to select from the photos in your flickr collection and display them in a square of up to 36 pictures.

Margaret Ann said...

OOOOH Oh OH MY! I LOVE this spread...And the holly...oh my goodness...it's my absolute favorite..and to have it in your own garden!!!! Fabulous fabulous fabulous!!!!

Joan Sandford-Cook said...

I can hardly believe the response to this post as I felt it was by no means one of my best efforts in my garden flowers sketchbook... but I accept all your kind comments with pleasure.

Thanks also EJ for the flikr advice, and whats all this knitting you have been doing Claudia? .. and Margaret delighted to have a comment from you - I so admire your work and your light tour post was magic.