Artist in Residence at US Botanic Garden

Painting at the US Botanic Garden

The first week in October was my week as Artist in Residence at the US Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. This unique opportunity came my way as a member of the Botanic Artists Society of the National Capital Region (BASNCR), a regional chapter of ASBA. In conjunction with the American Society of Botanic Artists' (ASBA) exhibition: Botanical Art Worldwide: America's Flora displayed in the West Gallery, the USBG presented the "Botanical Art in Action" program as a way of showing the public how botanic artists create their work. Artist members of the BASNCR volunteered and were assigned one week for each of us to be present and create a work from the garden's collection.

We were asked for our preferences in plants we'd like to illustrate, and I gave my first choice as the ornamental Black Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum 'Nigra') AKA Levant Cotton, a plant I'd admired a few years back when they had some lovely specimens growing outdoors. I'd collected some cotton bolls with seeds at the time, and planted them in my garden the following spring.

My plants didn't grow as well as theirs, of course (I have very poor soil), and the seeds from them turned out to not be viable, but I had a chance to see the unusual blossoms, which were beautiful! It was primarily the flowers that had beckoned me to choose this plant to illustrate, though the bolls are also lovely.

The USBG staff found me a nice specimen to work from, but as expected, it was too late in the year for flowers. No problem--the plant had many well-developed bolls, and I had brought some of my photos of the flowers to try to incorporate them into my piece.

The specimen.

The specimen was quite large, my first problem was how to approach the drawing--with just a few days to work there, doing the entire plant would be an impossible task. The only solution was to simplify: select one or two typical branches and focus on those. With that in mind, I set out to capture those branches in a line drawing and compose the arrangement.

Step 1: a line drawing.

The leaves were a challenge because they varied considerably in shape, and folded and bent in particular places, making them look very different from different angles. I traced my first drawing over a couple of times to correct the proportions, and broke up some of the stems to come up with a pleasing composition. This process took up the first day, while I answered questions about what I was doing and chatted with a number of visitors that came into the gallery.

Since I live some two hours away, I'd planned to spend two nights with my sister who lives in the northern DC suburbs, to cut down on my mileage. The rush hours traffic in the DC area being what it is, the actual travel time was only a bit shorter than from my house, but it was still a big help.

The following day I laid a piece of tracing paper over my drawing to do a shade and shadow study. While I was doing this, I shared the gallery with a class of some twenty 8-10 year old children who were learning how to re-pot an orchid.  Despite the added noise, listening to their class was a lot of fun. I was impressed by how well-behaved these children were, how engaged, and how the instructor was throwing them some pretty big words such as "epiphytes" and "terrestrial." After the class I asked what school they were from and was told they were from a charter school in DC--good for them!

Step 2: a shade and shadow study.

I added a detail of an open cotton boll in the empty corner in the afternoon. Once I had this shade and shadow study, I felt confident enough to start tracing my drawing in ink, ready to transfer it to the watercolor paper. I finished my tracing by the end of the second day there.

The following day I was ready to start painting, but since the unusual colors of the plant were so challenging, I thought it best to do some practice on a separate swatch of paper first. The artificial lighting also changed the colors somewhat, making them even harder to render.

The plan in artificial light.

Step 3: color practice strip.

My theory was that the underlying color should be green, overlaid by a reddish-purple wash. As a test, I did the leaf on the right using this approach, and the one on the left with the opposite--the red-purple wash below with green on top.  Applying the green first seemed to yield better results, so I went with that. Now I was ready to start the piece in earnest.

I started with the cotton boll on the upper left, laying in the shape of the cotton first, then the pod. while the washes dried, I began laying in the color of the flowers at the upper right. This was as far as I got by the end of the third day.

Step 4: painting the boll and flowers.

I stayed home the next two days to work on my garden and celebrate Herb's birthday, then drove back to USBG on Saturday morning. As anticipated, there were more people here today than on the previous weekdays, and I talked to a wide spectrum of visitors from many different states and abroad. It's a wonder I managed to get anything done, as I continued to add detail to the boll and flowers, while working in the greens of the leaves.

Step 5: underpainting the leaves.

At the end of the day, I had the underlying green for a few more leaves. The next day was our BASNCR quarterly meeting, and I would have no time for more painting. I'd have to finish the rest of the painting at home, relying only on my reference photos and sketches. During the first week after my on-site work, I put in the colors on the leaves and the first unopened boll on the left.

Step 6: more leaves and stems.

Step 7: the first boll and more leaves.

Step 8: two more bolls, leaves and stem

After letting the green wash settle for some days, I started putting the second, purplish-red wash over the leaves. Painting the larger leaves was particularly daunting--I was afraid that the green wash would run if the second wash was too watery.

Step 8: finishing color of the leaves

I was one leaf away from finishing the second wash on the leaves when I took a break to attend John Pastoriza Pinol's wonderful botanical art workshop at Brookside gardens. I wish I'd known about John's theories on color and transparency before I'd started on my piece, I would have taken a very different approach to my palette selection. But, even in these last stages, I learned enough to want to modify this piece to some extent. I've been working on the leaf surfaces and veins, trying to bring in more detail: the veining and reflected light, as well as the light on the bolls, and more color overall into the piece.

This story has taken so long to develop and write, I'm going to close this post now, without the finished piece, and show the modifications on the finished work in the next post.

Fall Garden Glories

Purple Asters and Sunflowers

Sunflowers on the west side

Every fall it's a thrill to see my Narrow-leaf Sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius) come into bloom, and then the purple asters (Symphiotrichium oblongifolium) gradually begin to open... the butterflies and bees love these. This year I've seen more monarch butterflies in my yard than ever.--they look so lovely sipping nectar from the flowers!

It's still quite warm, and most of the leaves are holding onto their summer colors, with the exception of the dogwoods. The one in front is particularly colorful this year.

Front yard.

The red Dahlia I had planted earlier finally produced one beautiful bloom--it's so late in the season I doubt there will be more than a few flowers, but what is there, is 'cherce'. I wish I had the time to paint it, but first, it's time to start fumigating and bringing in the houseplants that summer outdoors--the first frost is probably just around the corner.

Red Dahlia

Back yard beds.

The beds in the back yard continue to expand and be filled: a few more evergreens and perennials near the deck, more Coneflowers and Chrysanthemums in the beds behind. It'll take a few more years of growth before the beds begin to look full, that is if the deer and rabbits don't eat them back. This summer the rabbits ate two out of the three red Salvias I put in, but they didn't touch the marigolds--I'll plant more marigolds next year.  

Plein Air in the Shenandoah Valley

The Shenandoah River from Culler Overlook, watercolor, 10" x 14"

This past Saturday was the Plein Air Paint Day organized by Art in the Valley Gallery in Front Royal. The event coincided with the Annual National Public Lands Day, so everyone could enter the Shenandoah River State Park without paying the usual entry fee. This was a perfect opportunity for me, since I'd yet to visit this state park some five miles south of our town.

It was drizzling lightly when I woke up, and I was worried that our plein air day would get rained out, but the forecast didn't call for rain, just cloudy and overcast. So I packed up my gear in the car, made a sandwich for lunch and headed down to the gallery for our check-in. The gallery owners and staff are so nice! They had coffee, tea and scones to munch on at the gallery, and they had prepared goodie bags for all of us artists with water and snacks to take with us.

I arrived at the State Park and proceeded to Culler Overlook, which I'd been told gave the best panoramic views of the river. The view didn't disappoint--the wide bend of the river here reminded me a bit of the famous view of the Chama River in New Mexico, except that our hills here are covered with greenery, and show little of the underlying rock.

Two painters were already standing at the overlook--one gentleman had his painting well under way, and I recognized the other gentleman as Armand Cabrera, whom I'd met in the gallery at one of the opening receptions. Armand had not started on his canvas yet. I figured it might be a little too crowded with three of us there, so I walked down the trail leading below and found a nice spot under the shelter of some trees, just below the boardwalk--perfect!

I went back to my car and brought my gear and chair down. My working surface was relatively small--one quarter of a watercolor sheet, so I decided to paint only one side of the bend of river, to simplify the composition, and that worked.

After about an hour or so, another painter came down to the same spot to join me. I'd met Laura at the gallery before, but had forgotten her name. She told me she'd started blocking in the composition for her oil painting the day before, and set up behind me. Unfortunately, she seemed to be using turpentine (yuck!) rather than the less vapor-laden turpenoid and the fumes wafting down weren't pleasant. I tried my best to ignore it--thank heaven we were outdoors, and I could get up and walk around a bit to get away from it when it became too much.

After a while a young man showed up, who introduced himself as Casey and told us he was working with the gallery to take photos of the artists during the event. We obliged him by carrying on while he took his photos. Around twelve-thirty I took my lunch break, drove down to the visitor's center to use the bathroom and came back to eat my sandwich.

As the afternoon wore on, Laura and I chatted and I felt comfortable enough to tell her that she should ditch the turpentine because of its health hazards, and use turpenoid instead, with gloves on her hands to keep from absorbing toxins through her skin (she was picking up a lot of paint and turpentine on her hands). All these useful things I learned from my previous association with the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association (MAPAPA), bless them!

The one good thing about having a cloudy day was that the light stayed consistent throughout the day, allowing for plenty of time to work on our paintings. It rained all of the next day-- almost an inch of rain-- so we were very lucky to have had the plein air painting on Saturday after all.

The paintings will be on exhibit at the gallery starting Oct. 12--can't wait to see what everyone else came up with!

Presage of Fall

Hardy Begonias

Another very rainy spell brought almost five inches to our area this past weekend. The welcome cooling was a presage of the fall equinox rapidly approaching. Other signs are present in my yard as well.

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth caterpillar?

I noticed that something was eating the leaves of the lovely Viburnum 'Brandywine' and found the culprit--a caterpillar I've never seen before. After consulting an insect identification site I think this may be a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth caterpillar. The coloring is a bit different than the photos on this site, but the small spots on the sides are identical, and we have seen these moths flying around our yard, so it's likely this is one. My first impulse was to get rid of it, but since this is part of the moth's life cycle, I don't mind sacrificing my Viburnum leaves for its sake. Butterflies and insects are, after all, part of the balance in a garden.

 

Beetles on Hoary Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum)

Some are nuisances, like the milkweed beetles which feed on the seed pods of the Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) but are also appearing on other plants such as the native Hoary Mountain Mint. I read that these beetles a not a threat to the plants except for its seeds, so I'll probably just pull off the seed pods and see if that doesn't get rid of the beetles.

Seed pods of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) covered with Beetles

Other fall-bloomers are beginning to make a show, like the sedums and mums. Crabgrass has multiplied like crazy during this unusually-wet summer, and it's been just about impossible to keep up with the weeding.

Sedums 'Neon' and 'autumn Joy'

Chrisanthemums

I guess it's time for me to get to work digging holes for all the new plants I bought this spring that summered on the porch and the deck in pots. Tomorrow is the fall Equinox, and I'll be painting Plein Air with a group of local artists at Shenandoah River State Park.

Working on a New Painting

Rhododendron maximum

 A couple of weeks ago I started on a painting of the native Rosebay Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) flowers that I'd planned for some time. This tree-sized Rhododendron flowers late in the year, from mid-June to as late as July, depending on the location and exposure. The photo above is my specimen, and it was taken during a trip to Mountain Lake Biological Station a few years back. I had been saving this image, with a few other supplementary ones, until I had some time to develop a painting.

I "edit" my photos whenever possible so that the composition is already close to what I want--in this case, a branch with two lovely flower clusters. The problem here was that there was another branch crossing  the focal one, which had to be "edited" out in the drawing. After the usual steps of drawing and transferring the line drawing to the watercolor paper, I was ready to start laying in some color.

Step 1

I began with some pale washes of lavender on the central cluster to articulate the form of the flowers, and after that was dry, put in the touches of pink. The buds of this plant are tinted a beautiful, pure pink at the tip, which fade to a pale pink, or even white, after the flowers open. After the flowers were dry, I added the characteristic dots on the petals, and the darks of the bud scales behind, to define the outlines of the petals.

Step 2

Then I repeated the same process with the second flower cluster. This one shows more of the unopened bud covered with their orangey scales. Once this was done, it was time to start on the leaves. The leaves of this Rhododendron have a dull shine, but they still have some blue reflections from the sky. I started with a wash of light blue and a bit of yellow-green for the main vein and let it dry. Rewetting  one half of the leaf, I then began to fill in the leaf with dark green, lifting portions of the wash to suggest the shape and the veins.

Step 3

The leaf  was not very successful, so I re-wet it and lifted more color for better balance. After it dried again, I added touches of deeper green here and there to bring out the veins. This process was repeated for each leaf except the one on the right, where the underside of the leaf shows--the color of the underside is yellower and has no shine.

Step 4

Step 5

After the leaves were complete, and the woody stem, the flowers appeared too pale in comparison, and my composition seemed to have a "hole" at the top of the focal cluster. I added two unopened buds for a bit more interest, but the flowers still need something more to punch them up. I'm in the process of using colored pencils on the flowers (light gray and sepia) to try to define and bring out the edges more. I'll post the finished piece soon.

New Fall Pastels

Golden Beeches, pastel on sanded board, 9" x 12".

 

Rock Creek Reflections, sanded pastel board, 12" x 9"

Here are two new pastels of old favorite subjects painted for the Fall 2018 Art at the Mill show. It seems my old standard Wallis sanded paper is no longer available anywhere, so last year I bought these sanded pastel boards to try out. The new boards have a finer sanded surface than the Wallis paper, and they are the thickness of a regular mat, so they don't curl and can be handled much like small oil panels. This may make them more portable.

I may try using pastels for the Art in the Valley Plein Air paint-out in September, just to see how the boards perform outdoors, though I'm not committed to this medium--pastels are messy to handle  and I don't like wearing gloves if I can help it. It's always a risk to carry pastels in the field, since they can break and shatter easily if the box is dropped. I usually work with three different sets of pastels: a Sennelier half-stick set of 80 colors, a 45-stick set of Rembrandt landscape colors and an ancient 60-color Grumbacher portrait set I inherited from my mother-in-law. Sometimes it's hard to find just the right color, even among all these to choose from.

I may stick with watercolors for the Plein Air, they're definitely cleaner to handle and more flexible.

One for the Birds

Carolina Wren on hanging basket.

This summer I found a Carolina wren nesting in one of my hanging baskets of flowers on the porch. She spooked and flew by like a rocket when I was watering the baskets, grazing my cheek! I took the basket down, peeked in and found a tiny nest with one egg in it. I hung the basket back up and tried to make sure I didn't disturb her too much, though the baskets need to be watered every couple of days at this time of the year.

One morning a couple of weeks later, as I was opening the window blinds, I saw the wren perched on the chain, holding an insect in its beak. The baby or babies must have hatched--she dove down head first into the basket, then some motion with only the tail visible, and she flew off again. Moments later, another wren appeared--the same bird or its mate?--with an insect in its beak, and repeated the performance.

What a marvelous opportunity to get some photos of this! I ran upstairs to get my camera. I was lucky to capture these few shots. My photos were taken through the glass of the window, poking the lens through the blinds, so they're not as clear I would like, but even so, it's a privileged glimpse into the habits of these small creatures.

In the one above, you can only see a bit of the tail, as the wren feeds her young. She then emerged and perched for a few seconds before flying off in search of more food.

We've also noticed a nesting pair of red-headed woodpeckers perching around one of the old oak trees in back of our property. It's harder to get photos of them, since the tree is quite a distance from the deck, and my camera can only zoom in a little, but it's fun to watch their antics. I've seen up to five different birds flying in and out of the area, it seemed that at least two were males with the classic red head and beautiful black and white plumage.

Red headed woodpecker in the evening

In the shot below I managed to get one pair--a male and a female or juvenile. They were diving down into the blackberry bushes just below and then flying back to the trunk of this old oak tree at the edge of our property.

A pair of Red-headed woodpeckers in the morning.

I've also seen some ruby-throated humming birds in our yard, but these have proved impossible to photograph. I'm still learning about the birds in our area. Quite a few species are new to me, and so much fun to watch!

Red Pinesap

Red Pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys), colored pencil, 14" h x 10"w.

Last year Herb and I took a day trip to Pandapas Pond near Blacksburg, a site well-known to botanists for its amazing fungi and other unusual species. Pandapas Pond is about a three to four hour drive one-way from our home, and I had seen Yellow Pinesap there on a previous excursion to nearby Mountain Lake Biological Station a few years back. This time I wanted to look for the red form of Pinesap. Although some botanists believe the yellow and red varieties are two distinct species because they flower at different times of the year, the species have not been reclassified so far, both are known as Monotropa Hypopitys. The Yellow Pinesap blooms in early August, whereas the red form blooms in early to mid September.

I had asked Gloria, a local lady whose blog Virginia Wildflowers I follow, to let me know when the Red Pinesap was flowering, and in early September--its usual blooming time--she confirmed that the spikes had emerged, so I could plan my outing. Gloria gave me some very helpful hints on the places where the plants could be found.

Pandapas Pond

We took along along a picnic to enjoy in this lovely setting, and after lunch, we set out to find the Red Pinesap. We took a trail that led up a hill behind the pond and found ourselves in a forest thick with Rhododendron maximum as the understory.

Rhododendron trail.

The moist shady areas under these Rhododendrons constitute an ideal environment for plants that lack chlorophyll, such as members of the Monotropa family, as well as fungi. On the trail near the pond I saw a beautiful clump of Indian Pipe, another member of the Monotropa family, and knew we were on the right track.

Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora).

As we continued up the hill, I looked closely at the forest floor--these diminutive plants blend so well with the duff that it's hard to pick them out from among the dried leaves. Eventually, the slanting sunlight helped to highlight several clumps of Red Pinesap off to the side.

Red Pinesap on the forest floor

Some of the clumps were huge! Getting closer to photograph them, I could see the delicate bells of nodding flowers were a soft coral outlined in creamy yellow, the stems a more vivid red. After the flowers have been fertilized they begin to turn upward until they become upright, then the seed drops through the capsule down to the ground. There were flowers here at all stages of development. It was a good thing few people were about--I must have looked an idiot lying down on the forest floor trying to get the best angles on these plants!

Clumps of Red Pinesap.

Close-up of fertilized flowers.

Lovely clump of Red Pinesap

Same clump from a different angle

I took photos with both my camera and phone, and it's interesting to note that the colors of the phone photos are more garish that those from the camera--the colors seem very artificial compared to my camera's which appear more natural to my eye. That is why I chose to use the camera photos as the basis for my painting.

We wandered along off trail, finding more and more clumps of Red Pinesap all over, some were incredibly lush! After taking lots of shots for my painting, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking back slowly towards the pond, enjoying a wealth of other plants and fungi, some of which you see here.

Emerging mushroom?

Destroying Angel (Amanita bigosporigea)

Coral mushroom

Yellow Waxy Cap mushroom (Gygrocybe flavecens)

I chose colored pencils as the best medium to illustrate the Red Pinesap because pencils afford the precision I needed to show all the intricacies of this tiny, delicate plant. I can work as slowly or quickly as I want with pencils, since I don't have to worry about drying time, and my illustration was completed over the course of a week. It will be offered for sale at the upcoming Art at the Mill this fall.