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| Original Red Buckeye sketch |
I started painting my buckeye seedlings early this spring, as soon as I saw one sprouting. Working from life and making my drawing directly on the paper, I got this far, with the seedling at two stages: just unfolding, and with two sets of leaves. The painting needed something more, but I wasn't sure exactly what.
About a month later, during my spring walk at Blandy Farm, when I saw the red buckeyes in bloom I thought that a flowering branch of the tree might be just the thing to complete my painting.
I sketched these flowers of the hybrid buckeye (Aesculus x mutabilis) in the field, directly from life, and finished the other leaf later in my studio.
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| Original field sketch of Aesculus x mutabilis |
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| Completed sketch of A. x mutabilis |
I took a small flowering branch of the red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) with me to work on it in my studio. Since live specimens start to decay quickly, I began to work on it that very afternoon after putting it in a bowl of water. I was looking for a way to add this to the painting I'd started with the seedlings.
There wasn't enough space for the flowering branch on the paper, except to place it behind the larger seedling with the two leaves. But wherever the branch was placed, the seedling in front was in the wrong spot to accommodate the branch! Still, in my haste to capture the flowers before they decayed, I decided to go ahead anyway.
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| Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia) seedlings and flowers |
I added the seed and roots to the emerging seedling on the left in an attempt to take the curse off the whole, but the image is still way too confusing from the compositional standpoint--I wish I'd placed the second stage of the seedling lower from the beginning so that its leaves would not obscure the branch so much. But, unfortunate as it is, it is what it is. At least I have something to work from for a second, improved painting.
