Holmes for the Holidays Art Show
Part of the enjoyment I receive from botanical art is getting to know the flowers and plants from my garden on a different, more intimate level. This tulip is new to my flower beds this year. I have always loved the frilly, multi colored shades of the Parrot tulip. Last fall when my bulbs arrived, I took the time to draw one of them first before planting. This one was most interesting with the "sash" curving around the middle as the skin of the bulb cracked wanting to grow. Since this was a Mixture I waited this spring for the right colored flower. This one was my favorite. Hope you enjoy this bit of my garden. I am taking it with me to the Quailcrest Spring Garden Fair, June 11 & 12. Prints of this drawing will be available.
Last fall I drew this apple (unknown variety) in colored pencil. While looking for work to print for an uncoming show at Quailcrest Farm I decided to add a blossom to the picture. Sounded good to me, the only problem was that this year was apparently not the year for apples in our orchard. Last year we had a bumper crop so I thought maybe they were taking the year off. As a result, there were no blossoms to be seen! I checked each day with the same result...no flowers. But this past week as I was walking by I saw one blossom on the right tree. No others. I quickly snipped the branch, brought it inside, set it in a vase of water and finished my drawing. While working with nature it's always a challenge but I love it's happy surprises.
Back in January while thinking of projects for the year ahead the idea was presented to me by my friend Vicki, a fellow artist living in Australia, that we would each do a painting of a plant from our gardens each month and by the time the year had ended perhaps make them into a calendar. Well, life got busy and neither of us had time for the commitment but I am sure we will do it one day! This drawing in colored pencil, which took much more than a month to complete, would have been my "January" entry.
This pine branch is from one of our trees in the field behind our house. It was so striking in the snow and was clipped toward the end of winter. It took many weeks to complete and I had to wrap the cone on the branch with a wet paper towel to keep it from opening. I'm finding botanical art has it's challenges aside from just getting an accurate representation of the plant. We are dealing with living things that sometimes have minds of their own and we have to adjust to them!
Check out Vicki's blog. She's a wonderful artist.
Since deciding to visit the Ohio state parks as part of a personal ongoing art project, I have received lots of information from the state park system both in the mail and on-line. I have set up a "planning central" of sorts to keep it in front of me for motivation and also to keep the info in one place as I plan. One thing that is very helpful is the map of where the many parks are located. A few that we would like to visit this year are: the Lake Erie Islands, Mohican and maybe Malabar Farms in the late summer/fall.
Last weekend my husband and I began by traveling to Marblehead Lighthouse on Lake Erie. I should have a couple preliminary sketches to share in the next couple weeks -- sketches that will be made into larger, more detailed artwork at a later time.
