ENGLISH COUNTRY GARDEN

I needed cheering up with the cold and snow and now miserable rain out there, so decided to create a typical English summer garden for myself. Washed colours of acrylic ink onto a sheet of Lana Vanguard and then had fun playing and layering!! How many plants can you name????

SUNFLOWER FIELDS FOR EVER

Some years ago used to spend summer holidays in SW France and painted a field of sunflowers with the mist rolling in on an early morning. Don't know if I ever posted the original piece.... but

Decided to use the idea for a new brighter acrylic painting full of light and colour on 16" square canvas. So had fun finishing my new version today in my warm little study watching the sky turn orange and apricot as the sun went down over the trees so early this time of the year.

LITTLE CYCLAMEN FROM FRONT GARDEN

Thursday Ladies Art group restarted today after the Christmas break. I got out my garden sketch book and sketched a double spread of some little cyclamen by bringing in the hanging basket from the front garden.

Here is the double spread in my sketchbook. Problem since I purchased my EPSON printer is that the scanner screen is not as wide as my previous HP to take both pages in full, but it gives you an idea of how it looks. Made a mistake in putting a shadow below the pot, as it was supposed to be a hanging basket although it stood on the table for the afternoon.

Good to be back to sketching and painting after what seems a long break.

TWO RED ROSES

Have not painted new work of late but did manage to finish the Trevi Fountain I posted recently.

So thought you might like to see what we did at last Thursday's ladies' art session I hold in my home weekly. Two of the ladies coincidentally brought red roses to paint, so I joined them and gave a little advice here and there. When they all left I sprayed the painting with my fine mist spray that came with my Artelier acrylic set, letting the colours run and adding some droplets of red, yellow and blue to strengthen the base, spraying and tipping the paper as I went. Resulted in a more interesting background than the plain white paper.

So thats it for now. I have some work to do for Christmas so hopefully will have a quieter couple of days to get down to it.

WHITE ORCHID ACRYLIC DEMO

Went across to the western extremity of Norfolk nearly into Cambridgeshire last week to do an acrylic demo for an art group. I took my favourite pot and white orchids, but the rest of the painting is made up including the lace cloth, window, shadows and turning the back wall into a corner to create two tones to give variety. All these things were created as I went along with no preconceived ideas.

Showed them so many different techniques, I never finished the painting completely that evening and due to insufficient drying time was unable to do the final glazes and subtle changes in tone and composition. However a quiet weekend enabled me to complete it.... oh! yes including changing the table from straight to circular, creating a corner to the room, softening the shadows ... all as follows:

Here are some close ups so you can see the different techniques I showed the art group members.

Textured pot: I created the pot shape with palette knife and modelling paste and whilst wet pressed on confetti/sequin waste strip of holes. When dry (used a hair dryer which they found quite amusing) I applied normal acrylic paints in layers of glaze thinned down with flow enhancer to ensure the pattern showed through:

I created the lace with white and Turner's yellow acrylic paint and painted darker holes in lace pattern, then added three layers of different coloured glaze to create the soft shadow.

Finally, here is a close up of one of the orchids.

Their chairlady rounded up the evening by saying it was very rare to have acrylic demonstrated in 2 hours and all they had learned would give them encouragement to tackle this medium. The buzz words to go home with were 'be more adventurous' and 'love colour - any colour not necessarily what was in front of them' .... or something like that!

SUNFLOWERS WITH SMOKEY BACKGROUND

Finished this sunflower mixed media painting on Lana Vanguard support a few weeks ago and entered in local Rotary Antique Fair and Art Exhibition and pleased to say sold it together with the white gladiola painting I posted recently. Nice surprise selling a pair of floral pieces to one buyer.

I wanted to soften the background so added some white acrylic ink just tinted with a little light blue and rubbed with a soft cloth until I could see the floral images through - thus creating this rather smokey background.

WET ON WET GERANIUMS

Another sunny afternoon in the garden and I could not resist painting the geraniums again in another way - this time wet on wet watercolour on my Lana Vanguard shiny surface.

Decided to add detail of the flowers with fineliner red pen to contrast with the loose wet washes.

PAINTING IN THE GARDEN IN INDIAN SUMMER

Although turned into October yesterday, we are having such lovely weather I have been painting in the garden, still full of colour and blooms.

GERANIUMS IN A POT

Here is the pot of colourful geraniums in the corner of my garden near the little garden house, showing the Japanese anemone in the background in the raised flower bed and part of the lavender by the side of the paving. Sketched in the sunshine in the garden the other day with Helen.

...... and then I painted it close up again as a full watercolour in the garden yesterday.

PENSTEMON IN GARDEN
Here is a quick study of a penstemon in my garden sketchbook. Although tall and lanky spikes the blooms are so delicate.

Plan to put colour to my pen sketch of the full right hand flower bed showing the penstemon, the trunk of the chopped tree which allowed me to plant more flowers there this year, the peony tree, dahlia, californian poppies, phlox, orange large poppy heads, petunias and an acer. Too big to scan, so I'll photo it after adding the colour and post it then.

JAPANESE VASE ELY PALACE

A few years back Anita and I were invited to paint in Ely Palace. Although we spent the day working in the grounds, inside I was attracted to two large vases on corner windowsills and took a number of photos. Here is the acrylic of the JAPANESE VASE as finally completed - my daughter having bagged the CHINESE ONE full of deep purples. It has only just been adjusted as a result of a comment by my husband who said the deep burnt orange flowers I originally created dominated the vase - then I realised why I was not satisfied with it - so voila here it is with the toned down blooms ready for submission to the Art Circle autumn show in the Forum Norwich.

WHITE GLADIOLA IN PASTEL

Penny brought these lovely gladiola to one of our recent ladies group meetings, as we had planned to practice working with white flowers together. As you can see above, I demonstrated that white flowers are anything but WHITE!!

Here is an earlier stage before adding warm tones to the background, which made it come alive.

I enjoyed working in pastel again after so long.

CELEBRATION - title for my latest piece

Although I finished this in oils, in fact you could say its mixed media as it was originally started in acrylic a couple of years back with lots of different kinds of modelling pastes and Liquitex glass beads textured gel for the vase and wine glasses.

Over the past few weeks I have worked on it in oils and it has changed radically. I think the original idea of two people preparing to celebrate came from an advertisement but I added the flowers, vase and reflections and shadows. ... and it probably has no bearing to the original image now its finished.

Developed on a 20" square box canvas using Michael Harding oils and keeping my colour palette quite restricted. There was a period when I was inspired by the idea of painting scenes by a window from a row of pansies in bloom in little terracotta pots painted first in watercolour and then an acrylic version, snowdrops in the window and a couple of works I did for my sister in law with little white flowers with window boxes. I think I'll plan some more for a Christmas show I will have to prepare for later in the year.

Oh! yes, here's the CELEBRATION PAINTING:

... and here are images of some of the earlier window series paintings:

PAINTING THE GARDEN ON TWO RAINY DAYS

On Thursday last week when Philippa came to join me painting we could not go out into the garden because it was raining 'cats and dogs', so I drew the archway through the rain splattered window. The clematis had twined itself around the archway and then the hanging basket !!

I added the iris to the border because at the bottom of the right upright to the arch is the start of our little pond with these lovely soft pinky lavender iris in bloom.

Then I fancied doing another sketch in the garden a couple of days later when I had the afternoon to while away but - yes again - it was raining. So this view of our water feature was painted looking through the sunroom windows.

Needless to say they were both sketched in my lovely Columbine covered garden sketchbook.

ANGEL TRUMPETS

Thinking about another subject to go with the FAIRY FUCHSIAS watercolour on Lana Vanguard I posted earlier, I eventually came up with the idea of ANGEL TRUMPETS, not only because of FAIRY and ANGEL connection but because both flowers hang down. I had recently planted a DATURA, which is from the same Bragmansia family but its trumpets grow upwards and the one I found was dark purple with soft lavender edges. Maybe once it is in full bloom (currently has ten buds) I'll probably paint that as well.

Here is the finished watercolour 20" x 24" on my trusty friend Lana Vanguard. Like the FUCHSIA painting, I added black marker pen to accent the shapes of the main blooms.




This is how it began:

MORE FLOWERS ON LANA VANGUARD

After creating my iris and hibiscus watercolours on Lana Vanguard, I found I still had two further frames to match, though bigger at 20"x 24". So I got down to working on one of these last week and here is the start of my THREE FUCHSIA work.

I must have been mad because I drew it in with my LAMY PEN with Noodlers Lexington Grey ink but before I started adding watercolour washes I rubbed the lines with a soft cloth which made them blury and light. Nothing like experimenting as you go along!!



This is the finished piece, from which you can see I added background colour. I decided this because of the white sepals, but at the end I added black permanent marker pen to bring out some of the shapes - and I could have left the background white to match my earlier works after all!! Ah well such is art when you work my way by making decisions as the work develops rather than have any preconceived ideas.

Here is a close up of one of the finished flowers, so you can see how the watercolouor re-acts to Lana Vanguard.



Originally I had planned to do a strelizia, then had ideas about tulips and then poppies and finally when I got the Lana Vanguard sheet out the thought of fairy like fuchsia flowers just overwhelmed me. Wonder what the one to match will be!??

HIBISCUS ON LANA VANGUARD

I have now finished my second floral watercolour on Lana Vanguard surface of two hibiscus blooms. I photographed these in a garden in Port Elizabeth when I was visiting friends who have a second home there and they took me on a wonderful sketching tour of South Africa back in 2007. I had bluebird hibiscus in my garden at Cherry trees with many a photograph of the glorious blooms in my archives, but I wanted a contrast with the blue of the iris I have already painted in this trio.


Here is photo of early stages of the painting:







Thought you'd like to see an early closeup as well, so you can see the wonderful effect this slippery surface has on the many watercolour washes:








Finally, here is the completed work 12" x 16" to go in a 16" x 20" frame with nice wide ivory mount:





Now to number three - possibly the South African trip is inspiring me because I'm thinking of creating a very large strelizia from a watercolour I painted in my Saunders Waterford HP pad
in the garden in Port Elizabeth:








Here I am working on some kafferboom we picked from a tree just outside the bungalow where I was staying. When I painting the strelizia I picked one bloom but kept dashing back to the front garden to see how the leaves grew:




Ah! memories!

IRIS ON LANA VANGUARD+

I made a decision this year that I would spend much more time with my floral work and I am really enjoying myself. This is the first of a series of three watercolour studies on Lana Vanguard surface 12" x 16". If only I could decide whether they could be classified as 'contemporary', I would submit them for the Fakenham Contemporary summer Exhibition. Maybe the effect this slippery plastic surface has on the watercolour washes helps bring the work away from botanical traditional work. What are your opinions.??



Here's the finished piece:

... and here are some close ups so you can see the wonderful reaction that occurs when you add different washes on top of each other whilst they are still wet and then paint the detail once it is all dry. The other good thing about this surface is how you can remove colour right back to the white surface :

My next one is going to be Hibiscus.

COLTISHALL LADIES GROUP

Last Thursday we restarted our Coltishall Ladies weekly group and two of us worked with pastels. I had another cyclamen plant in full bloom and it seemed a good subject to play with lots of colour.



Drawn in briefly with a cream coloured pastel pencil on an almost gold coloured 360 g/ms sheet from my Clairefontaine Pastelmat 30 x 40 cms pad with interspersed wax paper to protect each work from smudging, I then used my box of 72 soft Ashby pastels. At the end I used a natural sponge to wet over the background to see if it helped the main image come forward. Not sure it made much difference!!

Of course, I think you could say its not really finished as a piece of artwork but what I achieved in the afternoon involving tea, cakes and lots and lots of chat catching up on each others' news.

FRESHENING ACRYLIC ROSES

Stuck indoors due to wintry weather, decided to check out some work I had started many moons ago to finish for a prospective client interested in roses.

This canvas is 24" x 30" and I freshened it up with new raindrops and highlighted edges of some petals created with my silk gutta outliner tubes. I glazed areas with smokey blue (mixture of white and king blue) thinned down to create feeling of moisture in the air and over the bud and distant blooms.

.

This is one of a series of 16" x 16" macro flowers, which I have freshened with more highlights and stronger shadows, then added a cobalt acrylic wash to the background leaves and stalks to send it back further.

Finally, I was comfortable with the original working of this third rose, so simply gave it a light semi permanent protective matt varnish.

ANOTHER MAGIC GARDEN PAINTING

As it seems such a long time since posting the sketch of the London Fireworks on the first day of the year, I looked round to find something to post. I've been working on some more MAGIC GARDEN pieces for a Spring show and dug out this VIEW OF THE TREES from my store cupboard to bring back to life.

I don't think you have ever seen this particular one I was not too pleased with, so I added lots of my gutta shiny glissening paint usually used on silk to give it some oomph and played with the treeline. I also took my own advice about 'more darks' and think the outcome is much improved.

please enlarge to see the effect of the shine.

VIEW ACROSS THE BORDER

You may remember an earlier post at the beginning of December when I had started a second acrylic piece to go with my AFTER THE RAIN. Well, I have finished it choosing hollyhocks and irises as my main flowers, so maybe you'd like to check back and see how it started because here is the finished VIEW ACROSS THE BORDER:

In case it does not enlarge, I add some closeups of areas of the flower border.

I am pleased with the result and it makes a good contrast to the AFTER THE RAIN garden piece both 76 x 61 cms canvas. I have some moulding of a silvery bronze box frame about 4 cms wide and will ask David (local framer gallery owner) if he could use that for me.

Now I must work on my second MAGIC GARDEN 41 x 41 c ms to deliver all by the end of January to be transported to Normandy.

WISHING YOU ALL A VERY SUCCESSFUL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.