I missed my coloured pencils though so I decided to make a leaf for fun first. The Arum italicum is growing well around my house and in the winter it's so nice to have their wonderful green leaves in the garden. Also I am always captured by the elegance of the leaves. They are a lot of fun to draw and, as I soon found out, also to *paint*. So, here is my Arum italicum (Lords-and-Ladies) leaf:
I also went to the Helleborus days at my favourite nursery "De Kleine Plantage" in Eenrum. I bought 3 wonderful looking Helleborus plants. One very pale pink, one pink with deep magenta freckles and one in the deepest darkest colour of... well, not sure what to call this colour... Red? Purple? Chocolate brown? Let's call it black.
I wanted to try and paint that one of course. The Dutch Society of Botanical Artist will have an exhibition in May and June in Culemborg. All work on show will be for sale so if you really like this one, come to Culemborg and make me happy ;)
I'm still working on it but I can show you what it looks like so far.
I need to work on details (like the centre of the flower and the veins) and there also will be another flower or bud (or both) under the top flower. It's a lot of fun to work on this. The colours are so rich and dark. Mixing all different kinds of black (Red-black, Purple-black, Green-black, Brown-black) is playtime for me.
After this there are bulbs waiting for me. Next year the society will have an exhibition in 't Huys Dever where we will show all kinds of old bulb plants. I have four bulbs on my list of which three already are making green leaves fast. So I'll have to finish that Helleborus quickly.
Ornithogalum reverchonii is first in line (in the photo above ^). This one has already so many sprigs of leaves and is also showing some young plants growing around each bulb. My hands are itching to dig one of the bulbs up and draw the bulb with the new puppies.
More on the bulbs later. I'll first have to finish that Helleborus.
