Friday 25 March 2011

Busy, Busy, Busy...

It has been a little while since my last post and things have happened. Let me first tell you my three paintings I made for the SBA show in London (in two weeks) got accepted. That made me very happy of course and allowed me to seriously continue my next work.
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.

6 comments:

bellis perennis said...

De zwarte soorten trekken mij altijd aan dus ja een zwarte helleborus Hij ziet er fragiel uit aan zijn bladeren herken ik het ras maar aan de bloem zou ik hem niet herkennen meestal andersom Plaats je hem nog een keer als hij af is? Het groene blad vind ik mooi Die plant ken ik denk ik niet maar het is altijd fijn groen blijvers in de tuin te hebben Nu ik hoop snel weer wat van je werk te zien Groetjes jacky

A Brush with Color said...

Wow! You're so prolific, too, Sigrid. I'm always amazed how fast it seems you produce things of beauty. Love the colors in both of these pieces. So soft and delicate, but still "rich."

Teresa said...

I'm in awe of your talent! Such beautiful, delicate renderings.... a real pleasure to browse your blog.

Jane said...

You make beautiful paintings , ... great skill. I started out with botanical painting, but have now totally switched to watercolor, I still really like this technic, though.

Unknown said...

I love your work!

Jala Pfaff said...

So beautiful.