Viola

Viola tricolor, watercolor, 12" x  9."

My latest class opus are these pansies. I bought a flat of six plants at Riverhill, our local garden center, to take to class. In the drawing I merged two plants to show a little of  the range of different colors and markings these hybrids sport. There is also one with ruffled orange flowers, and another all-blue double I may try to record before their season ends. I planted the pansies in the front flower bed after the painting was finished.

Pink Tulips

This is another one of my class exercises: to do twelve tiny watercolor paintings of the same view of a flower using only one color, to practice shading. The idea is to practice giving a sense of the three-dimensional shape of the flower using variations in the amount of pigment in the wash. I learned several new techniques for moving small amounts of pigment over wet areas with greater control.

First we sketched the flowers in class (in this case a tulip) and traced it on tracing paper, to transfer it onto the watercolor paper. We did a value study on the tracing paper sketch to decide which areas should be dark, which parts light, and where to put the mid-tones to create the illusion of three dimensions. Using this sketch as a guide, we worked one tiny painting, then went on to the next, and so forth.

Repetition being the key to mastery, this was a very good exercise. The results are pleasing, and the red-pink tones most suitable for a Valentine's Day emblem.

Graphite Drawings

These are practice sketches for my botanical class: the African violet is my first sketch for the certificate project for this class. We are to do several value studies of the plant until we find the one that seems most suitable for a finished illustration. We will then use the same plant for a watercolor painting. My violet has two small flower buds now--it would be nice to have a few more blossoms to paint before the project is complete.

 Above is another study of  the same orchid I did last week with the budding stem. This week one blossom has opened and it is a very unusual one. Here's a photo of it. I'll probably do a watercolor of it just for my own practice, as well as documenting the plant. I'm trying to figure out what sort of hybrid my Florida roadside purchase is. It resembles some Miltassia hybrids I've seen on-line in photos (hybrids of Miltonia and Brassia genus), but it could be a three-way hybrid with something else. I'm not an orchid expert. The flower has a light scent, not quite a sweet perfume, but something more astringent like night-blooming Jasmine.

Twigs N Leaves

Twigs N Leaves, watercolor, 10" x 8."

Here's my latest assignment for the Botanical Illustration certificate program. We were charged with composing a "scatter" design with leaves using tertiary colors (ocher, russet and olive green). These colors are the natural colors of the fallen leaves I usually collect on my walks, so it seemed logical to use some of them in my piece.

These particular leaves, with the exception of the glossy Camellia leaf at the top, were gathered on a walk in Rock Creek Park that Herb and I took on a warm November day. The foliage colors were lovely, especially the beeches with their golden brown glow, the maples in reds and yellows coming in a close second. Herb collected the nut--a pignut--which was just cracking open and opened further after a few days indoors. Drawing the nut from a frontal view to reveal the sections of the outer shell with the nut inside was a real challenge, and I had to try several times to get it right.

The Euonymus alatus (lower right, small reddish leaves) is an invasive non-native species, but its tiny red berry with the winged pod adds an interesting detail. There is an American species which is a far more desirable plant and native to our area, Euonymus americanus, also known as Strawberry Bush or Bursting Heart for its unusual seed pods.

Here's a photo taken during our walk.