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| Wisteria frutescens, watercolor on paper, 12"h x 10"w. |
It was an honor to be asked to illustrate the Virginia Native Plant Society's Plant of the Year for 2021. Each year VNPS designates a Plant of the Year as the focus of their mission to educate and promote native plants. It was late in November when they contacted me, and the illustration needed to be finished before Christmas so that the brochure could be produced on schedule for the new year.
I worked from several excellent photographs provided by VNPS, and since I had to work fast, I traced the outline from the photographs to get the proper size and proportions of the flowers and leaves. The inflorescence of this plant is a very complicated raceme consisting of lots of small, pea-like flowers, which needed to be carefully articulated in the drawing. I later refined my drawing as much as possible directly from the photos.
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| Pencil drawing from the photo. |
The entire drawing seemed a bit larger than the actual flowers should be, though it is hard to determine the actual scale when you don't have the real object in front of you. I reduced my drawing by scanning it and printing it slightly smaller. I then traced this drawing in ink in order to transfer it onto the watercolor paper, re-arranging the leaflets a bit to give a better sense of the compound pinnate leaves.
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| Ink drawing for tracing |
Next, it was time to start on the watercolor. Being right-handed, I generally start with the upper left corner. In this case, the upper left raceme of flowers and buds. Using Schminke's Brilliant Blue Violet, I laid down very pale blue-violet washes and gradually built up the deeper violet shades. The outer parts of the flowers are of a contrasting brownish red-purple shade, mixed from Perylene Maroon and Quinacridone Gold.
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| Starting the watercolor. |
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| Continuing on the flowers. |
The small raceme of flowers between the two larger ones was left lighter and in softer focus to suggest that it is located behind the other two.
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| Adding the stems and leaves |
After the flowers were almost finished, I started painting the leaves with yellow-green washes. The yellow-green leaves are a close complementary color for the blue-violet flowers, but a little unnatural looking.
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| Working on the leaves. |
Some toning down was needed with deeper shades of green to give a sense of the different planes of the leaves, of light and shadow. I'm very curious to see how the finished work will look reproduced for the VNPS Plant of the Year brochure.
