Yellow Magnolia Blossoms

Yellow Magnolia 'Butterflies'

Finally, after waiting for three years, I've been able to enjoy my yellow Magnolia 'Butterflies' without having the flower buds blighted by frost. A few flowers that tried to open early on had their petals singed, but the majority of the buds held off. My tree is still fairly small, but it is such a lovely sight!

Yellow Magnolia in my yard.

Close-up of flowers.

Spring has really sprung this past week, and my front yard is full of daffodils and narcissi, with  patches of creeping phlox all in bloom. 'Mount Hood' and 'King Alfred' daffodils in the back yard are also blooming, and the grape hyacinths (Muscari armeriacum) seem to be cropping up in odd places as well as in the beds where I planted them. The squirrels like to dig these bulbs up and re-bury them as suits their fancy.

The front yard.

Back yard with daffodils, weather station on pole at right.

Mt Hood Daffodils.

The finches had emptied the feeder with the Nyjer seed, so I went to Lowe's and bought another mesh bag of seeds to hang from the cherry tree. This morning they were having a regular feast--I hadn't seen this many finches at any one time, and managed to snap a photo with seven of them!

Seven finches visit the feeder.

More finches came along after the first shift--they are ravenous, and at this rate the new bag will be soon be empty, but they are so much fun to watch! The goldfinches are just changing into their summer plumage. The cherry blossoms on the tree will soon open too--it will be beautiful.

Early Spring Flowers

Crocus flowers.

The first warm days of March this week brought my crocuses into full bloom. It seems there are three distinct varieties: the pale lilac Crocus thommasinianus, a deep purple variety and a scattering of feathered lilac ones. The last two were part of a mixed crocus assortment I planted there during our first fall here--as I recall, there originally were some yellow ones in this mix, but somehow, the yellows seem to have died out. With so many voles and squirrels that like to eat them, it's hard to keep these bulbs growing from year to year--the yellow ones must have been the tastiest.

Bees love the Crocus thommasiniannus

The C. thommasinianus seem to be the least palatable ones to the rodents, so they have reproduced and are forming nice clumps under the cherry tree in front. The flowers are a-buzz with bees during the sunny afternoon.

Feathered lilac crocuses on the right, and C. thommasinianus on the left

Journal sketch

And of course, I had to sketch a few for my journal. The 'February Gold' daffodils have also opened in the last days. The lavender growing behind it was starting to overtake them and had to be pruned back quite a bit. These will probably need to be divided this coming fall, so I'll have to decide where else I can tuck some of these beauties to advantage.

Daffodil 'February Gold'

It's so wonderful to see green shoots coming up everywhere! I'm hoping my yellow magnolia will have the chance to bloom without blighting frosts this year.

The Spotted Mandarin

Spotted Mandarin (Prosartes maculata)

Yellow Mandarin (Prosartes lanuginosa)

I'm finally getting the opportunity to work on my painting the Spotted Mandarin (Prosartes maculata). The genus Prosartes, of which there are two species, the Yellow Mandarin (Prosartes lanuginosa) and the Spotted Mandarin or Nodding Mandarin, are members of the lily family which are perennial woodland plants native to the Appalachian region. I saw them for the first time a few years ago during a trip to southwestern Virginia with the Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS). The Spotted Mandarin is considered rare in Virginia, but not yet endangered.

Inked pencil drawing

Working from my photos, I developed a drawing of two flowering sprigs--one stem with two flowers, and another stem with a single flower. On the stem with the two flowers on the left, you may notice there is a tiny object on the stem just below the clump of leaves. This was a curious thing observed in the field: it mimics a dried leaf so convincingly that one of our team had to point out to me that it was actually an insect, a moth to be precise. I took a close-up shot using my camera's macro setting.

Unidentified leaf mimic moth

I've been fascinated by this tiny moth, and have been trying to identify it--after going through a number of insect identification sites my best guess is that it's a type of Sphinx moth, but I've not been able to find the genus or species. Nevertheless, I wanted to include the details of the moth in my painting, in order to add more interest to the composition with a likely pollinator for the flowers.

Once my inked drawing was transferred to the paper, I used masking fluid on the edges and veins--practicing the Pastoriza techniques learned last fall--and after the mask was thoroughly dry, began laying very light washes of color.

Spotted Mandarin - Step 1

With a gradual build up of colors, the shapes of the flowers and leaves begin to emerge. The white flowers are so pale and delicate, it's a challenge to articulate the tepals and other parts. The veining of the leaves is quite distinctive too, with a sort of puckered pattern. The entire plant is covered with fine hairs, most noticeable on the stems.

Spotted Mandarin - Step 2

Spotted Mandarin - Step 5

I still have a number of things to do before the piece is finished. Perhaps before it's complete, I may have the identity of the mystery moth.

A Venus Flytrap For My Windowsill Collection

Sketchbook page: My Windowsill Collection, 10" x 8".

One of my habits (which my husband finds charmingly eccentric, so much so that he now joins me in this eccentricity) is to collect curious odds and ends on my nature walks--objects such as dried seed pods, twigs, mushrooms, a tiny bird's nest, a shed snakeskin--for future study and perhaps sketching. These objects are displayed on my studio windowsill (and his office), making for some interesting conversation pieces, and some find their way into my paintings before they disintegrate.

A few weeks ago, while it was snowing and outside temperatures were in the single digits, I sat down with my sketchbook to try out ways to render one of my favorite little treasures: a skeletonized daylily seedpod. Every year I find dozens of these from my Stella d'Oro daylilies and collect the best ones; the lacy veins are just beautiful!

My first try in watercolor didn't work quite the way I had hoped, so I switched to colored pencils to try again. That version proved more successful, so I moved onto one of the mushrooms that had dried and become mummified on the windowsill.

I have several of these dried mushrooms of various sizes, the spores under the caps of these all have settled into very unusual patterns as they dried. I'm not sure this drawing of the small mushroom quite communicates. The geometric spore patterns are seen in the larger mushroom on the right, a more satisfying rendering. The colors all reflect the neutral tones of the season.

Venus Flytrap (Dionea muscipula) colored pencil sketch, 4" x 5"

About a week ago while I was shopping at our local Lowe's I saw these tiny Venus Flytrap plants on sale, and on a whim, I bought one. My plant is very small, its rosette no larger than three and a half inches across. As a child, when I first heard about the Venus Flytrap, I had imagined--as many folks who have never seen one in real life and only know of it from horror movies--that it would be the size of a pineapple plant (growing up in the tropics I was familiar with this plant)--large enough to lure a small mammal into one of its traps. In reality, the plant is quite small, ants and spiders are its primary food source; flies or perhaps a small frog are about as large an animal as it can manage. Still, its fascinating carnivorous habit and the curious triggering mechanism of its traps has given the plant a strange mythical appeal ever since it was discovered in Colonial times. 

I saw and photographed quite a few Venus Flytrap plants on a botanical excursion to North Carolina's bogs a few years back. Those plants were lush and well-nourished, with rosettes some five to six inches across, and many were in bloom. The flowers are white with delicate green veining, and the top of the stalk is held well above the level of the leaves, so as not to trap its pollinators. 

Venus Flytrap flower

Venus Flytrap (Dionea muscipula) from North Carolina

Venus Flytraps are known to be difficult to grow, and I don't expect mine to last very long--I'm keeping in in a saucer filled with distilled water, since our water is so alkaline. But I'm hoping to get a painting of the Venus Flytrap done before my live model succumbs.

Pages from My Journal

Crocus developing buds, Feb. 3

This winter I've been forcing some crocus bulbs, and decided to record their development in my new art journal. On Feb. 3 I started sketching the elongating buds with colored pencils.

Crocus flower bud.

Two days later, I drew the same bulb (again in colored pencil) as the flower bud began to show.

Crocus flower bud opens.

A few days later, I again drew the same bulb, this time combining colored pencils with watercolor pencils, blending with water.

Crocus flower is open, new bud emerges.

A couple of days later, I again recorded the progress of the crocus bulb when the flower was open and a second bud was emerging, using the same colored pencils/watercolor pencils combination. I will continue to record the development of this crocus bulb and see where it leads...perhaps a small painting documenting the entire cycle of growth?

Portends of Spring

Forcing Crocuses Indoors.

Recently the famous groundhog in Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil, came out of his burrow at sunrise and "didn't see his shadow" (huh? It was sunny in Virginia, one state away), portending that winter is about over. Considering the low temperatures were in the single digits all last week, I'm a bit skeptical about that, although in the afternoon temperatures rose to the upper forties and snow was melting.

But I can't deny that this morning as I was waking up, I heard a cardinal's call--it was 21 degrees outside. The cardinals are getting ready to nest--nothing unusual about that, cardinals normally nest about this time of the year and their eggs hatch some three weeks later.

Narcissus shoots emerging.

Better indicators of impending spring may be some of the plants in my yard: I noticed that the buds on my flowering quince were beginning to swell, and that the witch-hazels were in bloom.

Witch-hazel flowers (Hamamelis virginiana)

Pink Lady Slippers

Pink Lady Slippers (Cypripedium acaule), watercolor, 16"h x 13"w.

I'd been wanting to paint a grouping of Pink Lady Slipper orchids ever since I came across that amazing patch in the forests of Fort Valley a few years ago. I finally started on my painting just before Christmas. I used the same process as usual: start with a pencil drawing, refine it, do some shade and shadow studies, and ink the line drawing to transfer onto the watercolor paper. This time I skipped the light and shadow study, since the photo I'm working from seemed fairly straightfoward. The flowers in my photo already composed nicely into an arc, and the leaves surrounding them set off the flowers well.

The challenge here was to select a palette that uses the transparent watercolor pigments I've been transitioning toward. With the old palette from Brookside Gardens, I would have used Permanent Rose for my red; the closest equivalent to this pigment is Quinacridone Coral. Other primary equivalents were Indrathrene Blue and Vanadium Yellow, and I added Quinacridone Gold for the brownish tones of the sepals and petals and Bright Blue Violet for the magenta veins.

Step 1: washes on the flowers and leaves

The flowers were so tempting that I painted the two on the left in just a few passes, before even getting some washes on the leaves.

Step 2: building up the color

As I began to refine the leaves, I used a new brush, a Neef comb, which has these great "teeth" to make thin parallel lines, very useful for painting vein patterns. I'm almost finished, but I'm going to let this painting sit around in my studio for a while, to see if I need to add anything. Maybe a hint of  some of the missing petals on some of the flowers, darkening a few parts of the shadows?

I intend to enter this painting in the BASNCR group show organized by the Richmond area artists, "Ancarrow's List: Native Plants By the River's Edge" which will be exhibited at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, VA.

Winter Postcard Snow

Back yard in the snow.

It started to snow on Saturday evening, and continued all through the night. It was the first snow of the year, and by mid-morning there were about five inches on the ground. Several days before, I had arranged to deliver my artwork for a show at the Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore that Sunday, and since our street was plowed before noon, I figured the main roads would be fine. Herb agreed to come along for the ride, just so I could feel a bit safer in case the roads were worse than expected.

We took the northern route through Harper's Ferry and onto I-70 east toward Baltimore--with very little traffic to compete with, it was a winter wonderland! The wet snow clung to every branch, transforming ordinary weeds and brush into lovely visions of snowy blossoms. I wanted to stop at every turn to take photos, thinking this view, or maybe that one, would make a lovely silverpoint, but first we had to deliver the paintings.

It took about two and a half hours to get there. After delivering the paintings I would have enjoyed  walking around the snowy Arboretum for a while, but Herb dissuaded me--his old Frye boots were in no condition to make the trek. And, we only had another two and a half hours of daylight left, so we started back.

I-70 was deserted--we saw a few vehicles heading the opposite way here and there, but we traversed long stretches where we were the only car on the road, on an interstate highway where traffic is heavy every hour of the day, every day. Unusual, to say the least!

It started snowing again as we approached Frederick, and the snow became heavier as we reached Harper's Ferry. I pulled over to the side of the road to get these shots.

The rocks by Harper's Ferry

Icicles on the rocks.

The Shenandoah River at Harper's Ferry.

After a brief stop here, we continued; the wet snow was building up on the road and making the hills  somewhat slippery, but not too dangerous. The snow slackened a bit as we got closer to home, but it continued well into the night, building up to nearly eight inches.

Our neighborhood.

Front yard evergreens.

The next morning as I was getting up, I noticed the sun was breaking through the clouds...lit in the brief flash of the rising sun, the wintry landscape from my studio window was a sight to behold!

The back yard at sunrise.

Indian Pipe Painting

Indian Pipe (Monotropa Uniflora) watercolor, 13"h x 10"w.

This painting is a new version of one of my favorite plants. Herb and I first came across this member of the Monotropaceae family years ago during a Fourth of July hike we took at Rachel Carson Conservation Park in Maryland when we lived in near-by Sandy Spring. It had been a very wet summer and the tiny flowering stalks of this ghostly apparition were all over the forest floor. I was charmed by their delicate beauty and decided to pick one to take home so that I could draw it.

When we got back to our house a few hours later, I unpocketed my prize only to find that it had turned completely black! In my disappointment I began an internet search, trying to find out what kind of plant it was, and why it was so perishable. I've been captivated by this family of myco-heterotrophic plants ever since, and painted a number of portraits of other family members such as the Yellow and Red Pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys), and the elusive Fragrant Pinesap (Monotropsis odorata) which I've documented in this blog. These members of the Ericacea family (they are relatives of heaths and rhododendrons) live in deep shade, have no chlorophyll to produce their own food, and must draw their sustenance from mycorrhyzal fungi that colonize other trees' roots. 

A few years later, after another very wet spring, we returned to the Rachel Carson tract and found another extraordinary flush of blooms, even lusher than the first one.  By this time I had acquired my first digital camera, and was able to take lots of photos of these flowers. In addition to newer photos, I still use that first set in my artwork, and this painting was done from those.

Wanting to incorporate some of the new techniques I learned at John Pastoriza Pinol's Brookside Gardens workshop, I put masking fluid over the lines after transferring the drawing to the watercolor paper, and laid down very pale washes of the three primary colors.

Step 1: color washes over masked line work

When that was thoroughly dry, it was time to remove the mask, soften the edges of the lines and then gradually build up color. At first glance Indian Pipe appears to be ghostly white, but the color is actually more subtle: the stems have hints of flesh coloring, particularly at the curved neck, and as the stalks age, dark spots emerge here and there where drying or insects have nicked the edges of the filmy scales.

Step 2: building up the color

As with my previous Monotropa paintings, I decided to include some of the dried leaves and debris on the forest floor to give the plants a base, and to allow the pale stems to stand out better.

Step 3: defining the shapes with deeper color

It was hard to decide how much of the forest floor to include, and how far up to extend the background, whether to include some of the green leaves behind. I hope the final painting strikes the right balance.

Step 4: adding a suggestion of green leaves

Carolina Silverbell Tree

Carolina Silverbell (Halesia carolina), watercolor, 18" x 14."

The first post of 2019 is my finished painting of the Carolina Silverbell Tree (Halesia carolina). The painting was actually finished in early fall of last year, when the seed pods began to ripen. It was then that I was able to finally finish painting the last pod on the lower left, but I was busy with so many other things that I had forgotten to post it. The painting now shows the complete sequence from the flowers and emerging leaves of early spring, through the development and final ripening of the seed pods in the fall.

I'm hoping that a few of the seeds will turn out to be viable and germinate this coming spring. It would be wonderful to have a few seedlings of this lovely and unusual native tree to share with family and friends. Happy New Year!

Magnolia Seed Pod

Magnolia Seed Pod.

Back in October I had the opportunity to take John Pastoriza Pinol's workshop at Brookside Gardens, and I've been looking forward to sharing what I learned. John is a superb botanical artist who shares the distinction of also being a botanist, and he really knows his stuff.

First, he shared some tips for drawing accurately, focusing on the natural geometry that seed pods and leaves follow regardless of the species, and other botanical features such as leaf veins. Most seeds and pine cones are arranged in a way that follows the Fibonacci mathematical sequence that yields a spiral. How to foreshorten these structures to create a sense of 3-dimensional perspective is always a challenge.

John Pastoriza Pinol at Brookside Gardens workshop.

Explaining natural geometries.

Another technique new to me was the use of masking fluid, and applying it with a calligraphy pen. I had used masking fluid on a watercolor landscape  years before, but I had used a brush (ruining it in the process), and the process seemed so complicated, it hardly seemed worth the time and effort.

John's technique is to mask most of the lines of a drawing, including the outer edges, in order to leave very fine lines on the white paper, something that would be impossible to accomplish with just a brush and washes. Interestingly, this only works on Arches paper, and John explained that this manufacturer uses several layers of cotton fibers sandwiched between layers of sizing. Other watercolor paper manufacturers use only two layers of fiber with a layer of sizing in the middle, so if one applies masking fluid to those papers, the masking fluid will take off bits of fibers from the upper layer when it is removed, weakening the paper on the painted side.

Brookside Gardens had provided us a variety of interesting seed pods and leaves to work with, but I had brought a Magnolia seed pod that I'd picked a few years before that had dried into a very interesting state of disarray, and decided I'd stick with that.

Photo of my Magnolia seed pod.

Drawing this seed pod was a challenge, and putting masking fluid over the complicated line work, even more so. Once the masking fluid had dried, I was ready to start painting with very pale washes: Vanadium Yellow first, in the area immediately surrounding the highlights that were to be left white, which John referred to as the areas of "moon-glow." After this wash had completely dried, it was followed by a wash of Perylene Red in the areas of body color, and after that dried,  a wash of Cerulean Blue Hue for the shadow areas. As you can see, these pigments are very transparent, barely visible here. This was as far as I got on the second day.

Step 1: pale washed in primary colors.

On the last day of the workshop, stronger color was introduced: first a wash of Quinacridone Gold, then a chestnut color mixed from Quinacridone Gold with a bit of Perylene Red. When that was thoroughly dry, the mask was removed. We didn't have much more time, but John demonstrated how to begin the soften the edges of the masked lines to give the illusion of depth with a damp stiff-bristled brush called a Cosmotop spin. This works well with leaf veins also. The idea is to use a drier brush with each successive layer to build up the colors in a painting.

Step 2: gold and chestnut washes.

I wish the workshop had lasted a few more days, so that I could have learned ways to further refine my piece. As it was, I worked on it in the following weeks, gradually building up the darker colors layer by layer until getting what you see at the top of this post. I'm not sure it's quite finished yet--I may add a seed falling off or a fallen seed or two to the composition.

Little Brown Jugs

Variable-Leaf Heartleaf (Hexastylis heterophylla) and Little Brown Jug (Hexastylis arifolia),
watercolor with colored pencil, 17"h x 14"w.

Here's my most recent painting: an illustration of two unusual plants from the forests of southwestern Virginia. Hexastylis are part of the Aristolochia family (Pipevine), and considered a segregate of the genus Asarum (Wild Ginger). These plants are native to the eastern US forests and like Wild Ginger, have inconspicuous flowers that hide under the foliage. The flowers are pollinated by ants and/or beetles.

I saw these plants for the first time during a Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS) spring field trip to this area in 2017. The unusual flowers, the "Little Brown Jug" (Hexastylis arifolia) and the weirdly-mottled, elaborate flower of the Variable-Leaf Heartleaf (Hexastylis heterophylla), intrigued me, and I wanted to illustrate both plants in one painting.

The flowers bloom in the spring just as the leaves are emerging from the ground. I worked from a number of different photos, some taken in different locations, so it's quite possible that the mature leaf on the lower left is actually yet another species, Hexastylis virginica--there were no flowers on that specimen photographed in Pandapas Pond in late summer.

Line drawing in ink

As usual, I started my painting with a pencil drawing and once I'd settled on a final composition, inked the lines to trace onto the watercolor paper. At first I had thought of including a lovely orange eft (a juvenile salamander) photographed at a different location during the same trip, it was such a neat thing to capture on film! You can see a bit of the drawing of the eft under the tracing paper here, but I discarded this idea as detracting from the original intent, which was to focus on the unusual flowers of these plants.

First stage: colored pencil on the flowers with watercolor underpainting.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any other photos along the way to the finished piece. The hardest part of the painting was deciding how much of the leaf litter to include, and how to shape it to give continuity to the painting while presenting the plants in context. I hope the finished painting gives the impression of looking at a small piece of the ground in the woods.