In Celebration of Trees

Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea), watercolor and graphite.

Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore is presenting a show, "A Celebration of Trees" that opens on January 24 and will be on display for only two weeks. The theme of the show is--of course--trees, and the idea was for artists to focus on the many unusual species of trees found in the Cylburn Arboretum.

When I lived in Columbia, MD I visited Cylburn a few times, and enjoyed painting in their beautiful gardens. Preparing for this show, I visited the Arboretum once more last spring. This time, my focus was to study their trees and select one or two to illustrate. I chose two European Beech varieties on the grounds: a lovely Copper Beech shading the carriage house behind the historic home, and a huge old Fernleaf Beech shading the lawn approaching the home.

Copper Beech photo

If you look closely at my photo of the Copper Beech above, you can see a couple of the small reddish beech masts (the fruit or seed of the tree) at the ends of the branches reaching towards you. I'd never seen a beech mast close-up, and wanted to include one in my illustration. I was allowed to cut a small branch to take home for my work, so I cut one with a mast. The dark color of the leaves of this tree comes from the fact that the epidermal layer of the leaf is not transparent, and doesn't allow the color of the green chlorophyll underneath to be seen.

The branches of the Copper Beech appear very graceful individually, but overall, the tree's shape is considered somewhat awkward by horticulturists who prefer the more sinuous lines of the American beech.

Fernleaf Beech (Fagus sylvatica var. heterophylla 'Aspleniifolia'), watercolor and graphite.

The Fernleaf Beech (Fagus sylvatica var. heterophylla 'Aspleniifolia') is a rare variety of the European tree with finely divided leaves. This specimen must have been planted sometime in the late 19th Century (construction of the home began in 1863), maybe by owner Jesse Tyson himself. Its enormous, multi-stemmed trunk bears a resemblance to the American Beech's smooth and muscular trunk.

Fernleaf Beech in spring

I sketched this tree on site and again was allowed to cut a small branch to take home. Over the next week I struggled to quickly paint a watercolor study of each branch before the leaves drooped and began to curl. My intention then was to use these two color studies for larger, more complex pieces that showed both details of the leaves and the form of the entire tree. As usual, time got away from me while I was trying to decide on a composition, and I never got around to producing those pieces.

Instead, with the show deadline rapidly approaching, it occurred to me to present my two sketches for each variety of beech in a single frame--it would have a similar effect--and that is what I've done. I'm also including a couple more of my original field sketches in the show--the field sketches have a liveliness that is sometimes lost in the more finished works.

Field sketches of the two Beech trees.

If you have a chance, please visit "A Celebration of Tress" at Cylburn Arboretum.

Blatant

Bearded Iris 'Blatant', watercolor, 20"h x 12.5"w.

I finally got around to painting this bearded iris variety called 'Blatant' that re-bloomed in my garden this fall. Painting from photos is not ideal, but since the cut flowers had faded long ago, it was the only way to do it. I think the painting comes close to, but not quite, the amazingly rich red-purple color of the falls, with that touch of gold-brown at the edges--nature's perfection is so hard to imitate. Still it was a lot of fun to try. I used a dry brush technique for the subtle shadings on the flowers.

I can't wait for spring, when the irises bloom again. I hope to be able to paint more irises direct from life then--so many colors to choose from, such lovely flower forms!

Transformation

Transformation, color pencil, 9"h x 9"w.

With the winter solstice rapidly approaching, I wonder if we'll get a lot of snow this coming winter. Last winter (early this year) we had only a couple of snowfalls. In January we got about 6 inches of very wet snow one Sunday. I stopped to take some photos of it while driving--amazing how just a little bit of snow can turn a familiar landscape into a magical world!

Recently I finished this small colored pencil drawing done from one of those photos. An ordinary roadside clump of trees covered with tangled vines transformed into a lovely sight! I used some silver and gold colored pencils to enhance the monochromatic hues, but my drawing was still lacking something, so I dug up some old Daniel Smith Interference paints, and put a bit of Interference Silver over the snowy branches. These paints have ground pigments in them that refract the light to give them a metallic iridescence when viewed at different angles.

Unfortunately, you can't see the luminescence in this photo of the drawing, since the effect only shows up when viewed at less than 90 degree angles. Still, the iridescence and the composition make this drawing special.

Autumn Still Life

Autumn Still Life, colored pencils, 10"h x 13"w.

This is another demo piece from my colored pencil drawing class that I finished at home. The lighting here is the reverse of the usual, because I was sitting facing most of my students. I generally ask my students to sit at the tables so that the light from our classroom window is on their left. This is an established convention for drawing by right-handed people so that the hand won't cast a shadow on what one is drawing. Doing the opposite makes is difficult to see your work, but it is possible, particularly if there is another source of light such as overhead artificial lighting.

To reproduce the same lighting conditions in my home studio I placed a small LED lamp to the right of the objects, to try to replicate the lighting in the classroom, but of course, an identical recreation was impossible with such different conditions. My home studio has wonderful natural light coming from a double window that faces north, and my drawing table is positioned so that the window is on my left; I had to try to ignore the double shadows and some of the highlights that this unusual set-up produced. I like the way the apple came out (this was drawn first), but I'm not convinced that the highlights in the miniature corn and the pear, which were added later in my studio, match exactly that of the apple. Hopefully, the discrepancy is not too noticeable at a glance.

The back yard in late November

The colors in the still life echo the fall colors in this photo of my back yard taken in the past week--late November. Interesting how the black oaks have retained their foliage so late in the season, but again, these leaves hadn't started to turn until the early part of the month. Less sunlight reaches the back yard at this time of the year, and there are parts that will be shaded by the house until the Spring Equinox rolls around again. I wonder what kind of winter season we'll have.

Homework

Cape Primrose 7001 (Streptocarpus x hybrid '7001'), watercolor 10"h x 14"w

Recently, I've been bringing the pieces started as demos in my classes home to finish them, as experiments in techniques I can show my students. Obviously, I have to have a good grasp of the techniques before I can show and explain how to achieve the effect to them. So in essence, I've been giving myself homework.

I started this watercolor of my beautiful Streptocarpus hybrid  '7001' in class, and have been working on it to figure out how to render the color and texture of the leaves, as well as come up with an interesting composition. This demo started as a direct line drawing of the two flowers on the right, the two leaves to their left, and the arching leaf above to frame them. Once I had these down on the paper, it seemed to me that another pink accent was needed on the left, so I added another flower, two small leaves, then the two buds and the leaf curling to the left. I'm still working on it, to see how much more texture I can add to the leaves to make them look as real as possible. The leaves could all use a bit more color variation too.

Hyacinth bulbs, stage 1

Another one of my students was having trouble with a colored pencil drawing of some lovely reddish-purple hyacinth bulbs I'd brought to class. In order to show her how to develop her piece, I decided to draw one at home, trying to use similar techniques to what I'd learned at Elaine Searle's ASBA workshop at the Conference this year. The workshop was for watercolors, but I thought these techniques could be applied to colored pencil as well, and decided to test my theory here. I started by laying in some bright Teal blue in the shadows, and pink undertones with bits of Naples yellow, over a grisaille drawing done with a dark sepia pencil (stage 1).

Hyacinth bulbs, stage 2

After the first layer of bright colors, I began to put down the red-purple tones on the bulb on the right, bringing in more Naples yellow, while taking care to leave the white of the paper for the highlights (stage 2). Gradually, I laid in more and more color, varying the purple with magenta, burnt Sienna and dark ocher woven in with dark sepia, to develop the full range of values.

Hyacinth bulbs, stage 3

The challenge here was how to make the surface look papery, with its layers of peeling skin of different colors, while maintaining the integrity of the round forms. It's so easy to lose sight of  the main shapes when you are dealing with the color variations on a surface! The core shadows and highlights must be maintained in order for that shape to remain "readable." Breaking up the surface color to show tiny highlights on the edges of the layers of skin and the veins, I think conveys some of the shimmering quality of the skin. I could continue to work on this piece, to make it look even more convincing, but this is enough for now.

First Frost

Re-blooming iris before the first frost.

One of the irises I planted last year seems to be a re-blooming variety; this is what it looked like on Halloween. Halloween night was very stormy, with almost an inch of rain coming down in howling gusts. The following afternoon it became still, the temperature began to drop at nightfall, and by morning we had our first hard frost.

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to cut the iris flowers and bring them into the house the day before, but I went out the next day and cut the spikes, hoping to save some of the buds that hadn't yet opened.

Purple chrysanthemums.

Pink mums in the Little Indians bed.

The chrysanthemums don't seem to be affected much by frost, and are still putting on a show, as was the foliage until the Halloween storm blew away most of the leaves.

Back yard in late October.

Last week I took my plein air student up to Skyline Drive, and we painted at Gooney Run overlook. It was one gorgeous afternoon, with the fall color at its peak. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling my best (still recovering from a nasty virus), and while I had made a good start on site, I tried finishing it at home. The results are not very satisfactory--darkening the foreground too much, I lost a lot of the light on those colorful slopes!

The view from Gooney Run Overlook.

Gooney Run Overlook watercolor.

Oh well, not every painting can be a masterpiece, but I wish I'd waited until I was feeling better.

Beautiful But Deadly Angel Trumpet

Angel Trumpets (Brugmansia hybrid), watercolor, 15"h x 12.5"w.

I've been working on this piece for the "Beautiful But Deadly" show that the Botanic Artists Society of the National Capital Regions (BASNCR) is scheduled to have next summer at the Athenaeum in Alexandria. I grew this plant for several years when I lived in Columbia, Maryland. After three years or so, it had reached some four to five feet in height. Being a tender tropical, it needs to be kept indoors during  freezing weather.

During the winter I kept the plant in our unfinished basement by the glass door of the walk-out, and I usually checked it only once a week to water it. I never noticed the buds developing, and then one day, as I was going downstairs to our basement, lo and behold, an amazingly beautiful trumpet flower greeted me! The plant had a number of flower buds, and these bloomed over the next few weeks.

The following summer, I set the pot outside by the walk-out basement door, since it seemed to like the conditions there, and it bloomed profusely. I took many photos of it at various stages. After a few years, the plant wore out, and stopped blooming. I moved it to our new home in Virginia, and re-potted it, but it never put out any more flowers. It was so large and hard to move, one fall I finally gave up and decided to let it die over the winter.  That was a few years ago.

When BASNCR'a proposal for a show on toxic plants was accepted last year, I regretted my decision--an Angel Trumpet would be just the flower to submit for this show! I started working on the painting above from my photos, but the information on the photos wasn't enough.

As fate would have it, this summer I was shopping for plants to bring to my botanical watercolor class at a local nursery, and there I saw a tiny Brugmansia in a 4" pot on sale for $3.99. I was looking it over, wondering if there was still time to bring it into bloom before the first frost struck, when another customer, noticing that I seemed to be mulling over it, came over to me. This lady started telling me that she had bought one just like it a few weeks before and after potting into a much larger pot, her plant had grown very quickly and was now about three and a  half feet tall and covered with buds!  I thanked her for the information and bought the Brugmansia.

After re-potting my plant grew at an amazing rate. Toward the end of August it was about three feet tall, but I hadn't noticed that it had started to branch until I saw one tiny flower bud emerging. Brugmansias won't bloom until the main stem has branched--that's the sign that the plant is ready to bloom.

Brugmansia flower

The first bud opened in September, and more have followed. After seeing the flowers again, I realize that I had not remembered how large they actually are, and I can see so much more detail in real life than in my old photos. I feel the need to re-do my painting, the one above hardly does it justice!

Interior

The interior of the trumpet looks very like a Georgia O'Keefe painting I'm familiar with, her "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1", which sold for millions at auction a few years back. Jimsonweed is  Datura stramonium, another member of the same family as the Brugmansia genus whose flowers differ in being upright or nodding, rather than pendulous.

I've brought my plant inside in case we have an overnight frost. Now, I'm struggling to do more sketches of my buds and flowers from life while they last and work on a composition where I could show several views of the Angel Trumpet in all its intricate beauty.

Fall in My Garden

Swamp sunflowers (Helianthus angustiflolius) & Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia)

Each year with the approach of the Autumn Equinox, the swamp sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius) on the west side of the house begin their annual show. The date of peak bloom often coincides with my birthday and Herb's a week later. This year they were right on schedule despite a very dry September. 

Autumn Blaze maple turning red

West side of the house in the morning

The leaves of some of my trees have begun to turn, despite the unseasonable heat--likely due to a very dry month. The two photos above were taken within a week, and half of the maple's leaves came down while the swamp sunflowers and the purple asters began their show.

The back yard on an early October morning

This is the time of the year when I look to expanding my garden beds and increasing my stock of shrubs and trees. Seeing that my 'Amber Ghost' Japanese maple has now grown to a size sufficient to cast a bit of shade, I decided to expand the flower bed under it: a lovely Ninebark tree (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Amber Jubilee') in front, an unknown species of hydrangea in back, and three pink Agastaches on the left. The bulbs originally planted under the maple will bloom in spring: Mount Hood daffodils and Muscari armeniacum, whose foliage is emerging in the photo below.

Expanded bed under 'Amber Ghost' maple

West side yard

Here's what the yard on the west side of the house looks like these days from the bottom of the hill. Still has a ways to go before the trees begin to cast much shade, but remembering how bare this hillside was a few years ago, it's coming along nicely. This summer the artichoke plants grew well, but haven't produced any tasty chokes yet. If I can keep them alive through the winter, I may get some chokes next spring, who knows?

Replanted sunflower bed

Herb's sunflowers were setting seed in early September when one morning I discovered that all the flowers had been decapitated! Following the trail for likely suspects I found a couple of torn-off flower heads with scattered seeds at the edge of the woods in back, and it seemed to me that deer would not have easily bitten off a sturdy stem such as a sunflower's and dragged it off. No, a more likely culprit would be a bear--one could have torn all the flower heads to eat the seeds. It's known that bears happen to love sunflower seeds.

Taking that into account, it seemed wiser to replant the flowerbed with other plants that wouldn't be so attractive to bears. I had originally planned to expand Herb's bed to add other plants, and with the sedums beginning their fall show, I bought two new 'Autum Joy' sedums to put there, to echo the others in the Little Indians bed.

Fall is also a great time to take stock of plants that haven't done so well in their present spots and try them out in new locations. I transplanted the small clump of Muhly grass beneath the Seven-son flower tree to the new bed, as well as some yellow mums that were getting scraggly, being shaded out by the cherry tree in front. For a finishing touch, I added one of the three lavender plants bought at the Blooming Hill Lavender Farm when the Outdoor Painters of the Shenandoah painted there this past summer. We'll see how this bed will fill out over the next growing season.

The Badlands bed

The Badlands, as Herb calls the rear-most flower bed, seem to be improving somewhat. The purple aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) here survived the predations of the voles through the winter to put on a decent show--the other plant I had put in the Seven-son flower bed was completely eaten from the roots. The Shasta daisies in front developed only a few buds this year, despite being watered during the dry spell. The bee balm to the left of the Shastas was not doing well (probably too sunny and dry for it here) so I transplanted those to a shadier spot, and moved the native sunflowers (Helianthus sp.) in back which were getting chewed up by deer, to the front. I planted some of the prolific native mints from another bed to the back, in hopes of discouraging the deer. The Badlands have proved to be one of the most discouraging sites so far, but I'm determined to find some plants that can survive the onslaught of the weeds, deer and other rodents that assail this part of my garden, and flourish!

Chrysamthemum & 'Golden Globe' Arbor vitae

 Most of my Chrysanthemums got burned out by the late summer drought and haven't been much to look at this year, but a few plants in more favorable locations such as this one, managed to prosper. I hope to have a better show next year.

Purple aster

The original purple aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) is still the queen of the garden at this time of the year. It is simply covered with butterflies and bees all day long!