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| Christmas lights at our house. |
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| The front walk. |
Our Christmas decorations are a bit more subdued this year, but I like to think they look elegant. It doesn't appear that we will get any snow at this time of the year, but we may get some rain (which we desperately) need on Christmas Eve.
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| Our neighborhood at Christmas. |
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| Herb on the porch. |
And here's my sweetheart, greeting me at the door. May all your your Christmases be bright, even though here they won't be white!
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| Last week's pages: oat grass, dried hydrangea leaf and 'Nelly Stevens' holly. |
This past October I started a new botanical journal after seeing two presentations on nature journals by artist Lara Call Gastinger. She did one presentation for our BASNCR chapter Zoom meeting and another at ASBA's annual conference. I'd tried doing nature journals on several occasions before, but somehow, after a few months, I'd get involved in other things; it became harder to find the time and interesting subjects for entries, and eventually I gave up on these altogether.
Lara's concept that one need not fill up every bit of space on a page, but come back to use the empty space in subsequent years, freed me to think of a nature journal in a different way. The idea is to establish calendar dates for each page, and simply do as much as one feels up to on those pages. With this in mind, I decided to attempt a nature journal again, and try to have fun with it instead of making it a chore.
So, every week I've been sketching a little of whatever plant material I find in my garden or during my walks or wanderings. At this time of the year much of what I find is dried leaves or seed pods, with the occasional evergreen, or plants from my indoor garden. Last week I drew a sprig of the 'Nelly Stevens' holly, a curled-up leaf from one of my hydrangeas, and oat grass, all from my garden.
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| Bearss lime flowers, Beautyberry (Callicarpa amaericana) and Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera sp.) |
Generally I use pencil to do a very loose outline of the object first, then carefully draw it with more detail in ink before erasing the pencil guidelines underneath. The pencil scribbles help me to get the movement and proportions of the drawing more accurately. After the ink drawing is complete, watercolor pencils or a mixture of watercolor with watercolor pencils give it color. Notes about the plant with botanical name if possible, and occasionally notes on the pencil colors used finish up the entry.
On the previous week, I sketched blossoms of my Bearss lime tree wintering indoors, a tiny sprig of Beautyberry collected at Summerset (the site I visited for my painting of the historic property in Delaplane), and a flower from my Christmas cactus. The Christmas cactus produced four lovely flowers this year, and has a few more buds--last year the plant produced only two flowers.
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| Witch hazel flowers, Australian red finger lime, and Brassidium orchid flowers. |
I try to draw the material life-size, and one of the challenges is how to arrange the sketches in the notebook pages attractively so that they flow across the pages. Using color to unify the two pages is one way to accomplish this, but the design still needs to be taken into account. Do I bring in a branch from the left or right side, coming from the top of the bottom of the page? To draw or not to draw across the fold? Each set of pages is different, that's where the fun comes in!
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| Fir tree sprig, cedar apple rust gall on Virginia juniper, Virginia pine cone. |
I'll share more pages from my botanical journal in future posts throughout the coming year.
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| Summerset on Rose Hill, watercolor, 10"h x 14"w. |
Recently I was contacted by a lady who had purchased my "Fabulous Franklinia" painting at Art at the Mill this fall. She had acquired a historic property about 20 minutes from where I live, is in the process of restoring it, and wanted me to document the house and buildings in a series of paintings before and after the restoration, as well as perhaps create a botanical journal to document the plants on the site.
The property records date back to the mid 1700's, although the house, Summerset on Rose Hill, was not built until later. The former owner, Mr. Norman Baker, purchased the property in 1961 and did a good deal of restoration in the 60-some years that he resided in it. He also wrote a book on the history of the entire area known as the Crooked Run Valley, which I'm in the process of reading. I'll post more about that and Summerset as I read on and learn more about it. And there will be more paintings of it, too.
My client made a date to meet at the property and show me around. We walked the site on a pleasant, sunny afternoon, and discussed which views she liked and thought merited paintings. We both took photos and agreed I'd start with a small watercolor of the ensemble of buildings as seen from a particular viewpoint she liked best.
I waited to find another afternoon when the weather was equally pleasant, and last Saturday the opportunity presented itself. I'd sketched the buildings and composition from my photo ahead of time, so I wouldn't lose time doing the preparatory pencil sketch on site. At this time of the year the window for getting the right light and shadows in the afternoon is about two hours, after that the sun begins to move away towards the tops of the hills, and the light fades.
With the aid of my photo, I was able to find the exact spot for this view when I walked up the driveway, and got started on the painting right away. I studied the shadows and marked them so that as they started to lengthen I would still have something as a guide. And of course, I took more photos. By about four o'clock, the sun was gone from the scene, and the chill of nightfall was starting to descend-- time to head home. The painting still had a ways to go to completion, but by then I had a very clear map to do so; with the aid of my photos, I finished the painting at home.
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| Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), watercolor, 14"h x 10"w. |
Here's my illustration of the Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS) Plant of the Year for 2022--its common name is Buttonbush, the botanical name Cephalantus occidentalis. It's a shrub that can reach eight to ten feet in height and equal width, which loves wetlands. The "buttons" are actually clusters of tiny flowers arranged in a ball around. After the corollas and pistils fall, they leave behind seed pods which turn a reddish color and release their seeds in the fall. Many birds love to eat the seeds.
It took many steps to achieve the final illustration you see above. I first sketched a flowering branch in my studio from material I collected in the field--it was much too hot to sketch outdoors for any length of time during the summer doldrums of July.
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| First pencil sketch, 10"h x 8"w |
I waited until mid September to visit the plants again when they were setting seed--the seed pods turn a reddish brown color as they ripen, and I wanted to include this stage in my painting. At this time, the weather was a bit more conducive to outdoor sketching, so my next sketch was done on site on a very small sketchbook (my photo of it is awful, apologies).
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| Buttonbush seed pod sketch, 7"h x 5"w |
Next I had to figure out how to combine the two sketches to create a composition that would show both stages. The problem was that the sketches were of different sizes--to save time I scanned both sketches, increasing the size of the seed pod sketch and decreasing somewhat the size of the sketch of the flowers and buds, until I had both drawings at similar size. Then I combined the sketches, making some corrections, and inked the drawing for tracing.
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| Ink drawing for tracing. |
After tracing my drawing onto the watercolor paper, I was ready to start painting. I started with the flowers and buds, added a few leaves, then put some color on the seed pods and more leaves. As usual, I forgot to take more early and in-between photos of my progress, but here is what I managed to document.
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| Buttonbush - stage 1 |
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| Buttonbush - stage 2 |
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| Buttonbush - stage 3 |
I'm looking forward to seeing the brochure that will be published by VNPS with my illustration and our botanist's remarks.
