Heuchera brizoides "Melting Fire"

Have a wonderful 2009 everybody!!!

Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis'

I made another watercolour today. This is a Prunus in my garden. It flowers from November until April. I made a coloured pencil drawing of it once and I like the tree so much, I thought I'd try a watercolour too. I love my Winsor & Newton "Opera Rose"....

Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis'
about 15 x 4 cm, watercolour on Fabriano designo 5 Liscia.

Merry Christmas!!!

Hedera helix berries, watercolour (I'm painting again)

Don't worry... This will not be a long post. Just to wish you all a merry Christmas and to thank you for all your kindness these last couple of months. I hope next year will be a very good one for all of you. Happy holidays to all of you :-)

Florence

Finally I found some time to tell you about my Florence adventure. In the last week of November I visited my good friend Giovanni Cera (aka Ciuccio51) and his wife Michela. They live in Florence, Italy and I had a wonderful week there. Yesterday I found some time to sort out my photos from the trip. Here are a few of them. More photos can be found on my Flickr photostream.
If you want to see the locations of these photo's you can also take a look at my map.

I arrived on Saturday. I left a cold and snowy Amsterdam around noon and two hours later I landed in Florence where the weather was mild and sunny. It’s like a different world. The country, the weather, the people…. Giovanni and Michela showed me a lot of their beautiful city and country.
On the first day they took me to Piazzale Michelangelo. From that point I had a spectacular panoramic view of the city. Also I could take this nice photo of Ponte Vecchio across the river Arno.

Near the Piazzale Michelangelo was a beautiful and very old (1015) Romanesque church. It’s the church of San Miniato al Monte. Impressive and beautiful, from the outside but also from the inside. It was Sunday and the church was packed with people, listening to a very old mumbling priest.

The next day it was raining but not very cold. Giovanni wanted to show me Villa il Gioiello, the house of Galileo Galilei in Arcetri near Florence. He had told me about this house and its history before and now I got to see it. The house isn’t open for public. There are only three keys to this house and Giovanni has one of them. It was a privilege to get in and see the house and gardens.

There’s no furniture in the house (that all went to museums) but that didn’t mind. The house is beautiful. Giovanni did some restoration work on this house, since it is owned by the University of Florence, for which he works as an architect.

After that we went to see the beautiful Palazzo Vecchio in the centre of Florence. The ceilings of this palazzo are all beautifully painted. Every little part of the ceiling is decorated. If I would stay a month in that museum I wouldn’t only have a very cramped neck but also I wouldn’t have seen half of the painted ceilings yet. And that’s not all because there are so much beautiful paintings on the walls as well.

The square where this palazzo is situated is also very nice. Next to the palazzo is the Uffizi museum (photo left) and also there is a sculpture gallery, Loggia dei Lanzi, where I could admire the famous Perseus bronze by Cellini (photo right).

Is this post getting too long? Well.... I'm not finished yet, there is much more....

Giovanni showed me a lot that week. I won't bother you with telling you all and showing my entire photo collection but there are some things I really want to share with you. Just skip it if you don't find it interesting enough. I will never know ;-)

He took me to see the Botanical Gardens of Florence. He showed me the old greenhouses he restored last year. The plants were inside for the winter and that was very nice to see. Outside Giovanni and the director showed me a very old (203 years) oak tree, Quercus suber. Beautiful and impressive.

Another museum we visited that week was The Museum of Opificio delle Pietre Dure. In this museum are a lot of mosaics made of semi-precious stones. The style is typical for Florence. At first I didn’t think very much of it. It is not my style at all. But when you think that it’s all made with stones and you see how beautiful they captured the shades and textures of the subjects. It is truly amazing to see.

Michela and Giovanni took me also to the beautiful old town of Monteriggioni. It is situated on a hill near Siena in the beautiful countryside of Tuscany. It is extremely old and I suppose in the summertime packed with tourists. Now it was almost December and there were not much people walking around.

The sun was shining and we had a good lunch outside in the townsquare. Olives were being harvested and we had nice walk around the village.

All in all I had a wonderful week. I will definitely be back to see more of Italy, Tuscany, Florence and of course Michela and Giovanni. Not to mention all the other nice people I met while I was there… Thanks Giovanni for inviting me :-)

Tagged before.... whoops

In the tagging game on Flickr (blogged about that a few days ago) I tagged my friend Franny B. (she also has a great Blog called Whetnall Watercolours). It turns out she tagged me first, but in a different "game". This tag is about blogs and I'm sorry Cecca that I've missed it entirely.... whoops...
So now after a long period of waiting here are my 7 facts about me and the rules of the game of course:

Tagging Rules
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog
2. Share 7 interesting/random facts about yourself on your blog
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post, leaving their names as well as links to their blog
4. Leave a comment on each of their blogs to let them know they've been tagged!

1) After reading Cecca's list, the first thing that springs to mind is that I danced for our queen and her family once on Queensday (April 30 1986 or 1987 or something). The queen was a bit in a hurry so she didn't stay long to watch us perform(my dance group) but her sons and nephews stayed for much longer and didn't want to walk on to the next stop (old people making baskets or something). The princes had to be dragged away from us ;-)

2) I live in the North of the Netherlands and I love it. I've lived in Breukelen (near Utrecht), Amsterdam and Duiven (near Arnhem) but living in the northern part of this country is the best! People are calm, some would say maybe a bit grumpy, or even slow. I like the people here and most of all the beautiful "countryside" (horrible word). It is flat, wide, open, windy and you can often breathe in the air of the sea.

3) I want too much. It might be a good thing but it also can be a big problem. My head is filled with plans and ideas but I never seem to have enough time or energy to do things.

4) One of things I really would love to do is to make a little book with drawings typical for the Wadden area/Schiermonnikoog. I haven't decided yet if it would be a coloured pencil book or a graphite pencil book or even both.

5) The thing that helped me most to become the artist that I am right now is a botanical art course in the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden. It introduced the beauty of botanical art and it really opened my eyes after a lot of difficult years.

6) I've been depressed for a lot of years, there... I said it.... I've had a lot of difficult years starting when I was about 18 years old. Since 5 years I'm doing very well and my art is a big part of my happiness.

7) I'm a Flickr addict. Flickr turned out to be such a great place to meet so many lovely and interesting people from all around the globe... Like Cecca for instance ;-)

7 blogs that are now tagged too:

Joan Y: http://drawingonnature.blogspot.com/
Ryan: http://www.regardingwolf.com/
Juj: http://everythingiscontextual.blogspot.com/
Susan: http://susanrudat.blogspot.com/
Sophie: http://duckduckgoosestuff.co.uk/duckduckBLOG/
Suzanne: http://www.abrushwithcolor.blogspot.com/
Pola: http://srtapil.blogspot.com/

Sorry guys!

Two Small Apples

Made this drawing for my father when he retired. "Appeltje voor de dorst"....
The photo is a bit blurred because it's behind glass and I only have my small camera here.... I forgot to scan it before....

Coloured pencil drawing, 15x10 cm (about)

Siggy piggy

Haven’t blogged in a while. Mostly because of my wrist surgery (my wrist is fine btw and still safely packed in a big bandage). On Flickr however I did upload some photos this week. On Flickr there is lately some “game” going on. It is from the group called “I’ve been tagged”. It is a bit stupid actually but hey, if I’m invited I will play… this once.
If you are tagged (like I was) you’re supposed to upload the 5th image in your 5th folder of your images folder on your computer. Drop this photo in the group “I’ve been tagged” and tag 5 other flickr people.
For some it is great fun I guess. Well I did my duty and dropped my 5th of the 5th in the group and tagged 5 others. This is my photo, another selfportrait (but this time it’s in colour):

Naturally I got some comments on this. Including a comment on one of the labels/tags I added to this photo (which was “Siggy Piggy”). My friend Michiel commented that he liked Siggy Piggy so much. Thanks Michiel. But let me explain where it comes from….

On Flickr I have another friend. His alias is Norfolkboy1. He loves it to be rude and hard and funny in his comments. Most of the time he is only rude on his own photostream I’m happy to say. It’s not really rude in a negative kind of way… actually he is a very loving and kind man (although he would never admit that in public, but I know he’s very nice). I love to tease him back, and that’s how it goes…

In our comments he makes it some sort of a sport to call me silly names. And the big challenge is to think of a new name for me every time. In the past few months I’ve been called a lot of things. Here are most of them:

Siggy Piggy, little pedant porker, little piglet, little limp wristy sigry, Sigpig, Siggry, Sagred van Porkmeister, Dutch Dingbat, Frenzied, low country, low life, Mrs. Frenzied, Sigrismoaner, Dumb Dutch Doodle Doer, dumb porcine personage, picolino porker sigrissimo, swine Sigristolamaniac, Snortmeister, little porker, kleine schwine, SigridPigrid, Sigristomania, little clog clad mate, porker, Sig, little miss troublemaker, Sigrid Frenzied, little snorter, Dutch type person, Sigrismaniac, Frensen features, little miss piggy-in-the-middle, cloggy, Sigrid Van Friesland, Sigrid van Cloggsmania, Auntie Sigmaniac, clever clogs, dopey dutch dingbat, cheeky Dutch monkey (?), Dutch type person, The Dutch vandal, Frendless, Sigrett, Signorina, Auntie Sigmania, Siggypigs, Auntie Sigridstein, little monkey, little cloggy friend, Siggy Wiggy, Sigristothemill, clever clogs Frenzied, Stalker Bird, Sacrid, Sacred, cheeky little low country monkey, clever clogs, Dijk trechter(?), Sigrafitti, Auntie Sigfriedline, Seegreed, Stig, Sagrid, Sigristtio, Auntie Startingrid, Sigrismondeo, Sigrismunda van cloggysville, Sigrisio Van Nederlandio, little cloghopper Sigristti, Sigismunda, Sigrissimo, miss Sigrismunda van Clogmeister, Sigismunda Clogoxantia, Nederlander troublemaker, cloghopper, sad eyed lady from the lowlands.

Pick your favorite ;-)

Wrist

Today I had my wrist surgery. Strange experience. I'm home now and I have a lot of pain. The only thing that cheers me up right now is the thought of drawing again within a few weeks.

Hortus Botanicus in Leiden

Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, originally uploaded by Sigrid Frensen.

I had a meating of the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists in the Hortus in Leiden this weekend. The weather was wonderful and it was nice to be back there again. I was a bit sad I couldn't walk in the gardens because I had to go to Amsterdam too the same day.... Next time I'll be here again it will be in the spring of next year I guess.

Fan mail

Hey everyone! Two posts in one day, my goodness.....

But I forgot to tell you about a video a friend of mine made for me. Here's the video, with one of my favourite songs, "Breathless" by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds:

Or follow This link to few it in high quality.

Thanks Giovanni for making this beautiful video for me.

More seeds

Jeroen is home today so I can do a little bit of drawing. I decided to draw a seed head of a fluffy Clematis in my garden. It is Clematis “My Angel”.

I’ve blogged the flower before. But that was a photo. This morning I made a drawing with coloured pencil. A big challenge because the seeds are really fluffy and silky. Very, very light (almost white) coloured. But I was , after a lot of struggles, quite happy with the result. So to show it to you and the rest of the world I decided to scan it and upload it on the Internet. The scanner however couldn’t detect the light, delicate hairy seeds. So I had to take a photo of the drawing. Not a very good photo, but it is better than the scan. Very happy with this little drawing….. Hope you like it too ;-)

But wait! There’s more! I also found a nice looking seed head of an Acanthus mollis in the garden. Not possible to draw it this year but today I made a very nice photo of it. Here it is:

Tiny stuff

I have a ganglion in my right wrist. That's my drawing wrist. Normally a ganglion isn't very painful but in my wrist it is painful. Especially when I have been drawing for a while. So 1,5 years ago I went to my doctor to ask what it was and what he could do about it. He told me what it was and that I could get rid of it by hitting it against the wall or give it a big whack with a phonebook or a bible (in case I had a lot of faith in God's power). But he also said that it wouldn't be a guaranty that it would be gone for good.
My doctor is a very nice man with a great sense of humour. He knows that I draw botanical stuff and he likes my drawings. He therefore thought it would be wise to send me to a plastic surgeon in the hospital in Groningen.

The plastic surgeon (strange name isn't it?) had a look at it and told me it was unusual that it's hurting me so much. So, just to be sure, he told me to get an x-ray. There was nothing on the x-ray. So he told me to get a PET-scan. There was nothing on the PET-scan either. But still he didn’t want to cut the ganglion out of my wrist. He inserted a needle inside my ganglion and removed the glue like substance instead. He hoped it would stay away.
But a month later the ganglion was there again and still painful. So…. I returned to the surgeon. Now he wanted to see an MRI of my wrist.

Sighhhhh……

Ok, so two weeks ago I went to the hospital again to get that MRI. And last week I went to see my surgeon again. He told me that the real problem isn’t in the same spot where the ganglion lump is. But it is more inside my wrist. In the joint of my thumb. Now I have to get a surgery to get it all out. And for that he has to cut around some bones and tendons. He has to cut some tendons too.
The surgery will take place around Christmas time. Yippee! And after that I won’t be able to use my wrist for about 6 weeks.

BUT….. after that I will be able to draw again without pain. At last…..

And until then I only can draw some really tiny stuff. And that’s what I’ve been doing the last weeks. I can show you these two drawings.

One of Clematis seeds (although there are some people who rather think of it as sperm, and others look at it and think of tadpoles). They are the seeds of Clematis viticella “Little Nell” also blogged HERE.
The other little tiny thingy is the small drawing of a Hydrangea “flower” you can see at the start of this post. I want to do some more of those…. They are really very much fun to do.

Calla

Haven't blogged in a while. But I'll make it up by this one. I've been very busy lately. One of the things that keep me busy these weeks is a basic course in Botanical Drawing with graphite pencils. It's a three day course and is in the Nature museum of Leeuwarden.
Yesterday was the second day of the course. The students had to draw flowers. I had a lot of flowers with me for them to draw. Amongst them also Calla lilies. I never did a Calla Lily before and I thought it might be fun to try one. So I made a start yesterday but couldn't work a lot on this drawing because I had to walk around a lot and help the students (which was a lot of fun btw). So today I finished the drawing. And this is the final result:

Pippa !!!

A few weeks ago my niece gave birth to her second daughter. Pippa Mirte Maan.... And yesterday the card came in the post. Well.... card.... more like a little bag.... There were bulbs of four-leaved clovers inside. For luck.....
So I wish you Pippa, and your parents and little big sister Zoë all the luck in the world!
KISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Anemone hupehuensis 'Splendens'

The end result of the drawing I made in Eenrum at "De Kleine Plantage". Not entirely finished yet... but it is almost done...

Eenrum

Last weekend I was in Eenrum. A nice small village in the north of the province of Groningen. My favourite nursery "de Kleine Plantage" is there. I buy most of my plants there.... they have lots of interesting stuff. Every month they have a special weekend. Like a Hosta weekend, fruit and vegetables weekend, bulbs weekend and so on.

Last weekend they celebrated their 25th anniversary and invited all there contacts and friends to celebrate it with them. People came from everywhere with their own specialties to sell at "De Kleine Plantage". Since this year they also sell my cards in their lovely garden shop. And Fleur, Eric and Fenna asked me to come too this weekend. I sat in the greenhouse and sold cards for the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. I also demonstrated how to draw....

I made a nice drawing of an Anemone and a small Geranium. Both very pretty. It was such an inspirational weekend. I met so many beautiful people. It was great! Absolutely great!

Lime

I try to walk Ward to school with Bertus at least once a day (or to pick him up). Bertus loves to play on the playground at school with all the big kids... Next to the school is a church with a lot of Common Lime trees around it. I love these trees. I love it when they flower and I also love their seeds. At this time of the year they start to drop their pretty seeds. They are a bit odd. It looks as if they come growing out of a leaf. But is not a leaf. The leaves have a very different shape. I guess the tree grows this on the seeds to use as some sort of a glider.

Yesterday when we walked Ward to school I found some very nice seeds and, that same afternoon, I made a drawing of it....Here it is:

.

Common Lime/Tilia europaea/Hollandse Linde

Plums

It has been a little while since my last post but I have been very busy. A week ago I received a very nice gift over the post. It came from Italy. I met someone on the Internet. We mail about art, mostly botanical art. He started a few years ago painting and drawing plants. I saw his work and I liked it very much. We discuss each others work and also the work of other artists. It is very inspiring and fun. But I was so surprised when the post came and I found Four of my favourite drawings he made. What was this? What do you do in return? I can't just say: “wow, thanks!" So I started thinking about what I should give him in return..... He liked my drawing of Plums and Blueberries but it is one of my first.... This drawing reminded him of Giovanna Garzoni who was his inspiration to start painting botanical subjects. So I thought since it is the time for it, I should get me some plums and just try to draw some... I made two so far. Not quite finished yet but I show them to you anyway.

.

I think I'll make a few more, I love the colours and it is going very good so far... I don't know if my new friend will have them all, I'll probably keep some for myself... but I think, I hope, he will be very happy with this.

shades

The last couple of days I’ve been extremely tired. I have tried to draw. But Bertus keeps interrupting. He just won’t let me. This morning however I could do a little bit more drawing.

Bertus does not like sunglasses. Well, he does not like people who wear sunglasses. When I put on my sunglasses, in the car for instance, he gets really upset and scared. So when Bertus is around I don’t wear them. Last week however I gave him an old pair of sunglasses to play with. He could look through them and give them to everyone. Now I have to put the glasses on all the time. When the glasses are on the tip of my nose and look over them he thinks it’s funny. But believe it or not, he always has to push the glasses right up on my nose, so he can’t see my eye’s anymore. The weird thing is that I have to do this all the time. He isn’t scared of it anymore but does not trust me either. He does not want to look at me, but I’m not allowed to take them of. He just turns his head away or even walks away from me. So this morning, when I tried once again to continue on my drawing it was time for Bertus to give me the sunglasses again. So I put them on my nose. And with the glasses on I could do some drawing, ‘cause Bertus would leave me alone, looking at me a little bit suspicious now and then. It gave me some rest, but I can not recommend it, drawing with very dark shades on, when it’s raining outside.
I also tried to let Bertus sit beside me in his chair while I was working.

I gave him a piece of paper and crayons and for the first time he was “drawing”. Well, not exactly drawing of course. It was more like he was trying to kill the piece of paper with his crayons, but it was a start…

self-portrait

On Flickr I've joined the Nederland/The Netherlands Group. A nice way to discover more Dutch people on Flickr. There's a 'dicussion' in this group. The challenge is to send a portrait of yourself. I hate it when people take pictures of me. And I'm not the type that takes pictures of herself a lot. So this was a BIG challenge.

So I combed my hair and had a go at it. Gosh, that was hard! I mean really hard! I didn't know that I could look so worried, tired or just so extremely dope...

So I picked the best one and got rid of most of the colour. Haaa, much better. Everything looks a lot better when there's no colour (at least when it comes to my face :-D). And here's the result:

.

playing

So it was my birthday yesterday and my guys gave me a beautiful camera. Its the Panasonic DMC-TZ4. It has 10x optical zoom (wow!). Today I'll be playing with my new toy of course. This morning I already made some nice photo's.
Photo above is Crocosmia 'Lucifer', below you see Hydrangea serrata 'Preziosa', Achillea millefolium 'Lachsschönheit' (already lost most of it's colour) and at the bottom Clematis 'My Angel'.

08-08-08

It's my birthday!!! So here's a short post for you. I was digging through some old photo's from my garden and found these.

The first photo is Knautia macedonica. This white beauty is Geranium sanguineum 'Alba' and the next one is Geranium 'Orion'. The last one was in my garden but isn't anymore. I probably will plant it again in a different spot. It is a really pretty variety.