Sigrid Frensen

Passion

2012-01-21T18:58:00.001+01:00

I'm quite passionate about botanical art. Not only to look at but most of all to draw and paint it. Now I may have written about it before but I suffer from depressions. Botanical art is something that really helps me to stay positive. In the winter months however, it is not so easy to stay so positive anymore. Actually it gets very hard. The passion and the joy to paint is gone and I get a sort of painter's block. On the other hand, I feel even more misserable because I don't paint and draw. And if I do paint, it often turns out to be made for the dustbin. Quite vexing.
So, that is one of the reasons why I haven't painted something for months. Today I finished something though. A watercolour of Passion Fruits. A fun little painting which turned out fine. I first painted the smooth one, then the wrinkled one and finally the opened one with the snotty seeds. That was the hardest part since the colour of the seeds is so strange and it is shiny and semi-transparent, some seeds have a bit of a shape, others are more merged like pulp. It actually resembles a bit a blob of frog spawn.
I painted the fruits first and at the end I enhanced it a bit by using some coloured pencils. Just to make a few shapes pop, add a bit more shade and shape and most of all to accentuate the different textures.

Now let's hope this is the start of a better period and with a lot of pleasure in painting more stuff. Spring is coming... that's always a good time to get inspiration.

Rose Hips in Coloured Pencil

2011-10-02T22:51:00.002+02:00

TUTORIAL

This is a long tutorial, many steps but since I know many of you have difficulty to understand the process, I thought it's better to share every little step I took in creating this drawing. Enjoy :)

Materials

Every twig with rose hips is different of course so only use this list of colours as a guide. Of course you can use my list but I strongly suggest you have a good look at your own rose hips to see what colours will be best for you.
This list is not complete. I used a lot of different other colours for smaller details. It is wise to get as much different colours so you have large range to pick from.

Coloured Pencils:

Faber-Castell
234 Cold Grey VI
235 Cold Grey V
141 Delft Blue
278 Chrome Oxide Green
175 Dark Sepia
126 Permanent Carmine
223 Deep Red
121 Pale Geranium Lake
113 Light Orange
171 Light Green
168 Earth Green Yellowish

Prismacolor
1067 Cool Grey 90%
996 Grape
1095 Black Raspberry
925 Crimson Lake
923 Scarlet Lake
937 Tuscan Red
917 Sunburst Yellow
940 Sand
938 White
1026 Greyed Lavender
1087 Powder Blue

Yes, I use a lot of colours, I know :P

Graphite pencils: HB, B, 2H, and the hardest you can get (I have 10H)
Tracing paper
Lyra Splender Blender (or another colourless pencil blender)
Electric Eraser (like Sakura)
kneadable eraser
Embossing stylus, the thinnest you can get with a rounded tip. I use the Pergamano 0,5 10031.
Low tack Frisket Film (you just need a small piece of that)
Sketchbook/Sketching paper
A sheet of HP watercolour paper. I use Fabriano 5. Any brand is good as long as it’s white and HP (which is very smooth). Don’t use Bristol because that will smudge too fast.
A very good sharpener for your pencils.
Fine sandpaper for sharpening the pencils.
Eraser shield is optional

Step 1: Line Drawing

First of all you make a drawing of the twig in your sketchbook. Once you’re happy with it, make sure to erase all the sketch lines and mistakes, leaving a clean line drawing.
Now you trace this and transfer it on to your watercolour paper. Be very careful not to press your pencil too hard in the paper (this is very important!). Go over the graphite transfer lines with a very hard and pointed pencil (and don’t press too hard!!!). Draw very light, just enough to see the lines. Use your kneadable eraser to clean the paper, removing all the graphite powder from the tracing.

Step 2: White highlights

Before you start colouring anything you have to put the highlights in. I mean the very, very lightest parts. For now we'll call it white. The larger white reflections you can do with a white coloured pencil. I prefer to use my PC 938 because it is more "fat" than the Faber-Castell white. The tiny little spots of white or small light coloured light you want to save can be marked by using the embossing stylus. You press a little dimple in the paper so the next layers of colours won't reach that paper and stay white.

Step 3: Tonal Base

Now take the Faber-Castell greys and start putting in the shadows. Don’t press too hard. Make your shadows darker by taking a darker grey, not by pressing harder. Work gentle with small movements. Make small overlapping ellipses. Always use a sharp point, so often use your sharpener or sandpaper. Don’t push the greys too far into your drawing. Be sure to soften the edges to the white so you get a nice fade.

Step 4: Darkest shadow colours

Now squint your eyes and try to see only colours. What is the basic red, what is the colour in the darkest parts, what colours do you detect in the lighter parts. The parts that aren’t ripened entirely might be more green or orange. Make some colour studies on a scrap piece of paper. Layer some colours to see the effect.
Now start with the darkest colour for the shadows. Don’t pick a darker version of the base colour, don’t pick dark red. Pick something that glows through the red. I used Faber-Castell (FC) 141 Delft Blue and FC 278 Chrome Oxide Green. Again, add a very thin layer and don’t press too hard. Always a sharp point and gentle, gentle, gentle...

Step 5: First Colour

Take the colour you see all over the hips (the main colour). For me it was FC 126 Permanent Carmine. Put a soft layer of this red all over the hips where you can see that colour. Of course not on the white parts and not in the parts where it has a totally different colour.
As you can see I did the same with the twig, using FC 278 Chrome Oxide Green and FC 175 Dark Sepia in the shadows and FC 171 Light Green as the main colour.

Step 6: Deepen the colours

Have a look at the hips and look what colours you see “hidden” in the main red colour. I can see some orange glowing through the red in the lighter parts. Other parts have some blueish purple, I also see some browner reds. Put the right colour in those parts. In the image you can see I’ve added the FC 113 Light Orange. Still you’re not pressing the layers. Don’t forget to sharpen your pencils and work with small gentle movements. Don’t concentrate on details yet.

Step 7: Deepen the shadows

This is when I will make the shadows darker. I used a bit more FC 278 Chrome Oxide Green and Prismacolor (PC) 1095 Black Raspberry. I go really dark in the shadows and almost black where there are overlaps. Be sure you don’t go too dark near the edges.

Step 8: Deepen Reds

Take all your reds and layer your reds until you are happy with the colour. Try to use the FC pencils first and the PC last. When you feel good about it you can start using a bit more pressure to blend the colours together. Also put a layer of red over the shadows.

Step 9: Going Back To The Shadows

You might notice that the shadows got a bit weakened by the reds. So go back there and add again more colour. I used more PC 1095 Black Raspberry and in some parts a bit of FC 175 Dark Sepia and also PC 996 Grape.
The shadows in the rose hips closest to the viewer are darker. This is where I used more Black Raspberry. The hips further away have more Grape. This because it’s a cooler and a bit lighter colour. It’s a bit of aerial perspective.

Step 10: Blend the Reds

Now start blending all red layers with red coloured pencils. What I mean by that is that now you can start using more pressure to get a paint like effect and mix all the colours of the previous layers together. I love to use my Prismacolor pencils for this because the colours are just a bit deeper and stronger than the Faber-Castell pencils.
Be very careful not to go in the white parts. And even in this stage... keep your points sharp!

Step 11: The highlights

Now it is time to add the highlights. I used the PC 938 White. Be very careful to work from the white part to the red colour. Clean your pencil point every time it has been into the red and you want to go back into the white again. I also use the white with some pressure over the reds around the highlights as well.

Step 12: Reflected Light

After the highlights I take my PC Powder blue or a light cool grey or a greyed Lavender, what ever looks best, and add the reflected light in the shadows and around the shadow edge. Use a very sharp point and do this carefully. You want a sharp edge.
Now use the blender pencil all over the hips (but avoiding the white). If you feel the colours turned a bit dull you can lift it by adding a bit of red over it.

Step 13: Details

Finally you can concentrate on the details. You will probably see that some tiny embossed highlight points are gone or nearly gone. You can still see the tiny dents but the blending might have pushed some colour in. You can lift this by using some low tack Frisket film and your embossing tool. See the photos to see the magic happen.

You can use the Frisket film or your electric eraser to lift colour from the parts where “nasty brown bits” are. Small damages, beasty bites and things like that. These not so perfect parts give a lot of charm to the hips and make them more alive.

Peel some of the paper off the film and lay it over the part where you need to lift the colour. DON’T stick the film on the drawing!!!!

Take your stylus and make a tiny dot where the highlight should have been. You can also add a few new highlights like this if you feel it needs more white spots or lines.

Step 14: Sharpening the Lines

The drawing will look best if your lines are clean and sharp. On the other hand you don’t want it to be too sharp and crisp.
Most important is to have very, very sharp points on your pencils. It helps if you use a harder pencil than the Prismacolor pencils. Faber-Castell is hard but there is also the Prismacolor Verithin range. Very hard and very useful. The only problem is that you can only get it in the US.

Work from the “inside” of the drawing (see photo).

Finally you can use the hardest graphite pencil you can get (I have a 10H) and make a crisp line on the edge of your drawing. The reason why you need a hard pencil for this is that it gives a very thin line (use the sandpaper to make it dangerously sharp) but it hardly gives you a grey line.

Don’t overdo this crisp lining. Use it on tiny details, thin lines and very carefully along the stalks and stems. If you do too much or use a line that is too dark (too soft pencil) it will look artificial.

At the end, clean the paper with the kneadable eraser. Large boo-boos you can remove with the electric eraser (use an eraser shield if you need to do that near the drawing).

Finally

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that it all made sense, helped you and made you (more) enthusiastic about making botanical art with coloured pencils.

.

Painting in Eenrum

2011-09-12T22:33:00.000+02:00

Last weekend I was invited to demonstrate botanical art and sell my paintings, prints and cards at "my" nursery De Kleine Plantage in Eenrum. For some years now they are selling my cards in their shop and every year I'm invited for the Liefhebbersdagen. It's in the second weekend of September and many other nurseries, bulb sellers, specialised shops, bookstores, etc. are invited to show and sell their goods at De Kleine Plantage. It's always quite a big event garden and plant lovers in the Northern part of The Netherlands. I took some photos again this year. It's so nice to look at the plants that are flowering now, finding new introductions of plants and of course to meet up with friends who share the same passion.
Down below you'll find the tiny painting I made last weekend. It's Clematis 'Jan Fopma'.

The beautiful border of pots and containers at the entrance of the nursery:

The plants for sale, ordered by colour. It's nice to see plants of the same colour all together, easy to combine and it looks wonderful too.

This is at the greenhouse where I was painting. Part of the greenhouse was made into a tearoom, the other part was for a jewellery maker, a book store selling old and antique gardening books and me. On Sunday also Gert Tabak and Ton ter Linden joined us with their cards and books.

There were quite a few bulb sellers. The biggest of all was Hein Meeuwissen. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get some bulbs myself but I will order some. The displays of all the sellers was so mouthwatering....

Some of the plants that caught my eye at the nursery....

Allium tuberosum

Aster 'Vasterival'

Clematis 'Dark Eyes'

Clematis 'Princess Kate'

Clematis viticella 'Maria Cornelia'

Echinacea 'Maui Sunshine'

Kosteletzkya virginica


Purple Kale

And here he is: Clematis 'Jan Fopma'

Quail Eggs

2011-07-23T22:31:00.000+02:00

I found these little quail eggs in the supermarket yesterday. I couldn't resist.

Watercolour on Lana HP.

I'm a bad blogger

2011-06-13T17:30:00.001+02:00

I know... I really should post more often than I do but I keep postponing it like I do with so many have-to-do-things. Times have been incredibly busy. I'm working every day now that Bertus is going to school. I've worked hard on the bulb project for next year's exhibition. If you missed that, I blogged about that here. I made many sketches of the Ornithogalum and I'll do that later this year (after autumn).

I'm really hard working on a huge painting of the Spanish Bluebells. I like that one a lot.

I made a painting of the Arisaema fargesii rhizome. Now I'm waiting for it to grow and hopefully flower so I can do the rest. I also did a few other species of Arisaema rhizomes. They have such a funny shape and the different textures are really nice to paint.

The Narcissus didn't flower, oddly enough. But I can't say I'm very sad about that. I don't like Narcissus that much and above all it was a double one. Not my taste really.

In the meantime I did a little study of Rosa moyesii 'Geranium' Trying to do the first layers of the petals wet in wet. It worked. So perhaps I'll try it more often, now that I know it's not that difficult. Also I'm painting some tiny rosebuds on vellum now. That is a lot of fun because it is fast result and the colours stay so brilliant. It's not finished yet but here's how it looks so far.

Other news is that I sold my Nectaroscordum painting last week at the annual group exhibition of the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. I also sold a little painting of the black tulip 'Queen of Night'. A really fun flower to paint and not as hard as it looks. Really it's not!

I'm working now, besides the painting, on a new website. It will again contain a webshop where you can buy prints and cards and probably some originals. Also a big portfolio.
Even more exciting news is that my coloured pencil drawing of Polygonatum was published in the summer issue of "De Tuin, exclusief". I'm really proud of that since I think it's the most beautiful garden magazine.

I probably did draw and paint a couple of other things but these up here were the most interesting. I'll post the buds on vellum when it's finished. And that really should be soon ;))

Blackcap nest

2011-05-08T21:57:00.002+02:00

Blackcap nest, originally uploaded by Sigrid Frensen.

I have a pair of blackcaps nesting beside my front door in the Akebia. Not hidden at all and if it was built a few inches lower I could look into it. Yesterday I managed to take this photo of the eggs when the birds were gone for a few minutes. 5 Tiny eggs.

Today the male was on the nest and he seems a bit more brave than the female. He didn't fly away when we walked in and out the house but stayed on the eggs and looked at us a bit scared. What a man.... I guess the female was admiring her husband from a tree nearby enjoying her Mother's day ♥ *swoon* ♥

Plant and seed shopping

2011-04-02T22:03:00.000+02:00

I went to Eenrum again today, to my nursery "De Kleine Plantage". Mainly because they sell my cards and lot of them were sold out. I never leave empty handed when I go there. They have so much pretty plants and things. But no big buys today, even though it was their Roses and Clematis weekend. I want a peach coloured rose in my front garden but didn't find one that was good enough. Most of the ones that had nice flowers grew on shrubs that were too low for the place where I want it. Other roses with great flowers (gorgeous even) were ramblers. Also not what I need right now. I guess I'll have to look elsewhere or just alter my plans, go for something red instead or something.
Anyway.... I did buy some plants and some seeds. Here's what I bought:

- Agastache "Black Adder":

photo: Guy Hendrieckx

- Foeniculum vulgare "Giant Bronze" (had it for years and love it):

Anemone 'Rosenschale':

photo: De Kleine Plantage

Lythrum salicaria 'Blush':

photo: Adam Woodruff

And these seeds:

- Eschscholzia californica 'Milky White':

photo: Annie's Annuals

Tropaeolum majus 'Salmon Gleam':

photo: Deeproot Plant Base

Tropaeolum 'Black Velvet':


photo: Busy Bee

Lathyrus tingitanus:

photo: Florus

Cosmos Rubenza:

photo: Sericea

Papaver rhoeas 'Parelmoer':

Scabiosa atropurpurea 'Black Knight':


photo: Photofarmer

Sowing tomorrow with Bertus :))

Busy, Busy, Busy...

2011-03-25T01:00:00.000+01:00

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.

First Crocus

2011-02-24T13:03:00.000+01:00

Spring is coming slowly this way. Yesterday I dug up a Crocus from my garden. Once inside I could almost see it grow. Even though I was in the middle of another drawing I had to be quick and paint this fast. So, with a piece of thread around the petals, I painted it last night.

This is Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant'. Really odd name for this Crocus since it is not Ruby red nor is it a giant. It's small and purple. Little gems they are, they were right about that.
And like a friend of mine said to me last night, it's like she's putting her arms up in the air to celebrate spring is here at last!

Grapes

2011-02-18T20:36:00.000+01:00

I never painted grapes before. Neither did I draw them with pencils. I knew I could do them in coloured pencil. They are much like blueberries. And I did blueberries years ago. Getting the bloom just right was a wonderful challenge. When I bought these grapes I knew the bloom would be the most difficult bit. But I didn't want to do another coloured pencil drawing. I decided to try it in watercolour. Pretty scary to be honest. So first I tried one. It's the one in the front. It wasn't at all as hard as I thought it would be. It actually was quite fun. So I painted a small group behind the loose one. I tried out a few different techniques but they all resulted in the same nice surface. Funny enough the hardest part was to find out what colour to use in the shadows. I finally found sepia with a bit of permanent alizarine crimson the best choice.
.

Spring is coming!

2011-02-14T11:29:00.002+01:00

The very first sign of spring for me is when the Hazel (Corylus avellana) in my back garden starts to flower. The large yellow-green catkins dangling in the wind always make me smile. So fun that the male (the large greenish worms) and female (tiny red fluffy bits) catkins flower on the same twig.

I wanted to paint a larger twig than this but got a bit bored by the catkins. To be honest, I started to paint it very detailed but soon got lazy. And since I was doing it for fun I made a bit impressionistic catkins. At the end I put in some sharper details and shadows. I think I got away with it :P

Souvenir from Florence

2011-02-07T17:20:00.001+01:00

Now that all paintings are finished for the SBA show in London (I framed them yesterday), I wanted to draw something small. And with pencil! After all this time working with the small brushes and watercolours I just had to do a pencil drawing. On my desk I found a small Cypress cone. I found it in Italy last year near the Villa del Trebbio in Tuscany. There were lots of Cypresses on that hill, many of them very old.

In a few hours I made this small drawing in my sketchbook. I love drawing pine cones and this one was nice too. I think it's because I can go really black in the shadows. I also love the shape of these cones. Anyway, here it is:

Cypress Cone, Graphite pencil 3,5 x 6 cm

Finished Work

2011-02-01T14:24:00.002+01:00

It has been far too long since I've blogged something. So, here's an update. Last year, the last two months I didn't paint much. I wasn't well for a while and we had a very busy December. At the end of the month however, I decided to try and enter my work to the SBA show in London, next April. I want to send 4 paintings but it was hard to choose which ones. Also I felt like I had to enter work that reflects my recent work. I think I improved my skills this year dramatically. The course I did with Anne-Marie Evans had a lot to do with that. I now feel much more comfortable with the watercolours.

I wanted to enter my Nectaroscordum striptease but it's a bit personal. I don't want to sell it yet. So I decided to repaint it in a smaller version. Instead of the 5 flower heads, I painted 3. Also I changed the composition. To put them in a row, like I did in the first version, seemed stiff. Not at all what I wanted. So I moved them around till I was, sort of, happy with it.

As you can see in the slideshow, I had a big problem with one of the buds. It was the bud closest to the viewer but it was so grey and dull and there was nothing I could do to make it look fresh again. All I could do was to cut out the top layer of the paper and carefully remove the entire thing. I then polished the damaged part with a small agate stone and repainted the bud, giving it more colour and enlarging it a bit so nothing could be seen of the *gap*.
Here is the finished piece:

I'm also still working on another painting. It's Allium ursinum (or Ramsons or Wild Garlic). I made a sketch of it two years ago but never got to actually paint it. I wanted to give it a go for the SBA show because I was really pleased with the composition. Now this Allium has, as you might know, white, small flowers and large leaves. I first tried a flower head on a small piece of paper to get the feeling of the white, the shadows and the shape.

Next came the leaves. That was even more difficult because they were huge and wavy. All I had was a line drawing. I never got to add the shades to the sketch. So I had to carefully think about where to place the shadows. I therefore made a new sketch of the leaves and added the shadows with a pencil. I'm glad I did because I'm sure I would have totally messed it up if I hadn't done it.

Now I should tell you I'm scared of painting leaves. If possible I avoid it :P But these leaves were really needed. I tend to paint them too fast, use too much water and because of all that, mess it up. I had to tell myself over and over again while I was painting to be slow and work dry. Sometimes I did, but sometimes I didn't.

I had to carefully build the leaves to keep them wavy, clean and fresh but also to add drama and depth. I first did the shaping wash and after that I added the fisrt green wash of bright yellow green.

Now I'm adding more and more layers of deeper green to finish the leaves, adding details where necessary. So... not finished yet but getting there.

The third I finished (yesterday) is a painting I started last year and is one of my all time favourites. It's Pelargonium sidoides. I'm not a fan of Pelargoniums but this one is different in many aspects. The flowers are tiny and have a beautiful deep, rich, dark, almost black kind of red. Like small gems. The leaves are not too big and have a velvety silver grey look. That is such a beautiful combination, it makes you sigh when you first see it. No really, it does!
In a nutshell this is how it was to paint it: The leaves were difficult (because velvety and many cushions) but they went remarkably well, the stems were so thin and took the longest to paint them well and the buds and flowers were obviously the most fun to paint.

I'm so happy with this painting. I love the composition and the way the leaves turned out. If I will sell it I would hate to see it go. But that's the danger isn't it? Maybe someday I'll paint something like this again. Who knows.
The fourth I want to submit is the old drawing of Crocosmia 'Lucifer'. That will be the only one in coloured pencil.

I'll try and make loads of photos at the show and will report on my blog how it was. Ta ta for now ;)

Hips

2010-10-15T22:25:00.002+02:00

I finally managed to finish something again. And it was about time too. For the first time I painted rose hips with my watercolours. I already did hips in graphite, coloured pencils and even with pen & ink. But never watercolour. The Botanical Artists forum on Facebook has a bunch of very active and motivating members and when one starts to paint apples, we all start to paint apples. When one mentions she wants to paint hips I too want to paint hips.... It's fun though, to see all the different approaches to the same subject.

For the first time. And it was nice work. I really enjoyed doing it. I chose the tiny hips of Rosa 'Francis E. Lester'. This rose blooms with many clouds of small flowers during the summer and gets an enormous amount of orange hips in Autumn.

This is on Lanaquarelle HP, paper size 4"x 6".

Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901

2010-08-24T01:59:00.000+02:00

Today I bought 11 Caran d'Ache Luminance coloured pencils to test them. They are so expensive and I wanted to know if it's worth all the money. I bought really soft colours... almost whites, a light blue and a wonderful shade of Olive Brown. My favourites are Olive Brown 10% and Raw umber 10%. Very usable. I found them very easy to blend and they also mix well (blue and yellow actually make green, which isn't always the case). The leads are soft and give a nice smooth, rich colour. On the other hand, making a thin transparent layer was easy too which is good when you have to put on many layers. Downside is that you can't read well the silver colour numbers, but that's just a little thing (although it is a bit frustrating when you use many similar colours at the same time). I didn't test them in combination with my Faber-Castells or Prismacolors yet. But I'm really looking forward to it.On the Caran d'Ache website is a very nice colour-chart it's just a bit too small for me. I wish they had put the chart there that you can see in the photo here, at the start of this blog (click the photo to see it larger). I'll have to see how many colours are really different and usable in botanical art. €3,50 ($3.33 or £2.65) is really a lot of money to spend on one pencil. So that huge tin must be a really generous gift for Christmas or maybe I'll limit my wishlist to just a few more colours. I'm really curious about the greens and the black.....

I'm on Zazzle

2010-08-16T01:53:00.000+02:00

You can now buy some nice things with my artwork on it at my Zazzle store. There's not much there yet but I promise to fill it up soon. So if you're looking for a nice gift or you need a really fancy apron, come on over and make me a rich woman ;)

Shop other personalized gifts from Zazzle.

Dotting

2010-08-12T02:25:00.001+02:00

I've been so busy lately with a lot of things. Most of them had nothing to do with botanical painting, drawing or gardening. A bad thing, although the other things had to be done too. Last week we had a week off. We went on holiday, away from home and all the things that still need to be done here. We went to museums, slept a lot, visited my parents in law and I celebrated my birthday. All in all another busy week. But this was fun.

I actually found some time to draw a bit again. It had been ages since I made my last pen and ink botanical and I really felt like doing one now. Another artist, Michael Murillo from the US, asked me if I would like to trade drawings. I saw a nude sketch he made and I was impressed. I really loved it. He wanted to give me that sketch and trade it for one of mine. I don't have a lot of sketches. At least I don't think they are worth a trade. So I thought this pen drawing could be nice for him if he liked it. He did. So I started dotting this amazing deep purple violet Clematis viticella 'Black Prince' from my mother's garden. It was so much fun and so relaxing to do. Yesterday I finished it and here's the result. I think I might stipple another drawing soon.

Wild thing

2010-06-24T23:33:00.000+02:00

I finally found some time this week to make a (little bit) larger painting. It's only bigger in paper size, not in subject. This is a Grass Vetchling (almost sounds like some sort of bird). The Latin name is Lathyrus nissolia and its a rare and protected plant in the Netherlands. As you can see the flowers are very similar to other peas. The biggest difference is the foliage. It's a really grassy plant and it doesn't climb like most Lathyrus' do.

It's really thin and there's a lot of white left on the page, as you can see. It was difficult though. The stems are long and thin and I'm not very good at painting straight lines. So I took it really slow. I did manage to give all the lines a shadow part. And for the flowers I got the colour right. The pods were so nice to paint, that was really fun :)

Now I hear you all ask me "Where does this lovely vetchling grow???" Well, I'll tell you.... roadsides, grain fields, woodlands and dykes. Sunny, warm, more or less open places slightly moist, moderately fertile to fertile, slightly acid to often chalky, grassy soil. Plenty of places like that but it's a rare little beauty nonetheless :(

I wish I had this near my house so I could paint a bigger painting with a few sprigs, dancing together. But this must do for now. A lovely elegant wild thing.

Akebia and a fuzzy practise

2010-06-12T15:05:00.000+02:00

My Akebia quinata drawing is still not finished but I'll give you a nice scan of how it looks now. Here it is:

It's so nice to work with graphite again. Now I'll tell you a little about my technique because some people think it is only a very light touch. It is a bit maybe but most important is to use many different kinds of pencils. I use very hard ones (4H) and very soft ones(6B) and some in between of course. One of the most important things is to keep a sharp pencil at all times. So when I draw I have the pencil in my right hand and my manual sharpener in my left. I'm sharpening all the time.
Like in my coloured pencil drawings I layer a lot. In this way I can controle the lights and darks. To make a very smooth looking finish I use a hard pencil or I use a blending stump depending on what effect is needed. Most used tool to get a perfect drawing is my kneadable eraser. I use it all the time, to lift graphite, to add texture, to clean the paper....
Ah, and if you want to make a drawing like this too, be sure to use very smooth paper. I used Bristol for this one but there are other papers that are a bit more creamy and also very smooth.

Now, enough about that... Yesterday I had a bit of time to make a fuzzy Stachys leaf.

It's not a great botanical but I wanted to try out a fuzzy looking texture with my coloured pencils. Last year, when I tried it, I totally failed. I think now it's looking better. Not as good as I had in mind, but it's progress.

This afternoon I want to try out a technique I have in my head to make white flowers with coloured pencils. I never tried this technique so I don't know if it will work at all. In my mind it works very well... now let's see if it works in reality ;)

Akebia and others....

2010-05-02T01:12:00.009+02:00

It has been too long since I've posted something here. But.... I've been busy. I went on a botanical painting course of five days in Leiden. My tutor was Anne Marie Evans and I learnt a lot that week. We painted tulips. I guess tutors from abroad want to see tulips when they come to Holland. Last year, Valerie Oxley started her course with (yellow) tulips. I just hope this is not becoming a trend. I like tulips, don't get me wrong, I like them in a garden or a vase. Not to paint them. But I think I'm repeating myself, I told you all this before, didn't I?

Anyway.... I painted a botanical tulip, Tulipa turkestanica. It didn't make things easier for me (this one had five flowers instead of one and was almost white) but it looked far more interesting that most of the other tulips. Well it did for me, don't know about the other students ;) Here's what the painting looked like at the end of the course:

It's not finished yet, it needs roots and more details but you get the idea. It looks a bit old-fashioned, like it's from the 18th century, like Redouté or something. Very different to what I'm used to.

After the course I painted in "De Keukenhof" for a day with some other painters of the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. We sat in the Orchid pavilion, surrounded by hundreds of tourists from all over the globe, stuck or not stuck in the Netherlands by the Icelandic vulcano ashes.
So I painted my first ever orchid flower. Many botanical artists paint orchids. I didn't and I don't think I'll paint those cultivated orchids again. I just don't like them. I like the wild ones that grow here in the Netherlands but they don't look at all like the ones shown in the pavilion in Lisse.

The week after I had to go to the opening of the Siebold exhibition in the Siebold House in Leiden. A wonderful exhibition with wonderful paintings made by the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. My Hydrangea drawing is exhibited there too. Also a lot of old herbaria and floriligia are shown. Really nice to see the old things from the Siebold period next to the modern works of art.

I made this in Photoshop to show you the difference between the periods. The old painting was made by a Japanese painter and the Hydrangea on the left is a dried specimen that Siebold brought to Europe. It's a different variety than the one that I painted but I don't think he would have minded that :P

Now I'm back home and I decided to start a pencil drawing. It has been too long since I made my last graphite pencil botanical. It's of Akebia quinata, also a Siebold introduction. It has been on my wishlist for some years and it's flowering now in my front yard. I love this climber. The leaves are very interesting, the flowers are maybe even more interesting. But the colour of the flower is wonderful..... but I decided to do a graphite drawing anyway :D Maybe I'll make a coloured thing some other year. Now I just had to do a pencil drawing. So this is a WIP. I'll post it again when it's finished.

New stuff for my garden

2010-04-07T14:52:00.004+02:00

In Eenrum I bought some plants. Thought I'd better write it down somewhere to remember myself what it is I bought. I always forget....

- Angelica Gigas (2x)

- Astrantia major "Blues Night"

- Pulmonaria "Blue Ensign"

- Phlox "Rosa Pastell"

- Agastache "Blue Fortune" (although I wanted "Black Adder")

- Digitalis Mertonensis

- Astrantia major ex. "Hadspen Blood"

- Geranium "Sandrine"

I also bought some seeds to throw around in the garden Atriplex hortensis "Red Plume" is probably the best of all. Okay.... let's play in the soil now :))

Sweet Violet

2010-04-06T18:02:00.000+02:00

This tiny violet is flowering in my garden now. It's native to Europe and Asia but also introduced in America. It has a wonderful sweet scent and is therefore used in perfumes. It has a beautiful deep violet purple colour (which is always fun to paint). Painted on Fabriano smooth watercolour paper. 9 x 8 cm

That look...

2010-04-05T02:13:00.006+02:00

I was drawing the last two days. I saw a photo last week on Flickr. One of my contacts uploaded a photo of a girl. It was taken in the 1930s or so. The only thing we know about this girl is her name, Ruth Akin. Her portrait was so impressive, it was on my mind all week and I just had to draw that face. There's something about that girl. Her pose, her mouth... but most of all her eyes. They tell a story and it could be a very big secret or a sad history... maybe she was just tired. I guess we'll never know. It was a challenge to draw her and I made three drawings of her. The final one was the best and I think I captured a bit of her mysterious look. I made her with black coloured pencil to get a very dramatic contrast, like the photo.
I must say that it was a lot of fun to do and maybe I'll do something like this again some day.

The other thing I did (today) is going to my nursery to sell some of my cards and to buy some plants for my garden. I bought Astrantia, Pulmonaria, Angelica Gigas and a few other beauties. After collecting all the plants I wanted, I went for a walk in the spring garden of the nursery. Many wonderful flowers already. Helleborus, Corydalis, Scilla and, the best of all, Fritillaria. Not the normal Frits but a very light, creamy yellow, 50 cm high beauty: Fritillaria raddeana. They were planted all over the garden and it looked so wonderful. The weather was cold and very wet but those flowers lightened up the entire garden.

Another sweet surprise was a flower I never saw before. Well, not in this colour anyway. It had a name tag beside it and it said: Dentaria heptaphyllos. I couldn't find a lot of Dentaria heptaphyllos on Google though. But I did find out that it's better known as Cardamine enneaphyllos (Drooping Bittercress for normal people).

It's on my wishlist, just like that Fritillaria (funny that they both have the same pretty yellow I can tolerate in my garden... well... it's not very yellow at all.... Ivory.... Cream.... Lovely). Aaaahhhh.... spring :))

Playing with greens

2010-04-03T13:18:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I was mixing greens. Just experimenting with my browns, yellows, blues and greens. I got some really nice colours but didn't do much with it. Rather stupid not to make something nice with it, I thought. So I started this little memory of a walk through the forest I took last year.

I used a reference photo too but didn't look too much at it. I think the greens I used are a bit more springtime than they actually were when I took that walk (October).
I never work this "free", it's a bit uncomfortable for me but sometimes it's nice to let yourself go and do something entirely different.

Blue

2010-03-31T21:12:00.000+02:00

It's spring. That means a lot of blue flowers in my garden right now. Scilla, Muscari, Hyacinth and also the first Pulmonaria or Lungwort. I have many different variaties in my garden of this lovely perennial but today I painted one of my favourites. Pulmonaria angustifolia. It has extremely blue flowers (although the buds have a rich magenta colour) and the leaves are green (not variegated like most Lungworts). It was a quick study and a small one but I loved to try and catch that electric blue colour.

To get the right colour I used French Ultramarine, a bit of Violet and a little Paynes grey. To make the perfect colour for the shadow (in the blue) I mixed French Ultramarine with Cadmium Red. A wonderful mossy green I got by mixing Paynes Grey with Raw Umber. A really nice surprise that was :)

How Dutch can it get

2010-03-13T21:27:00.002+01:00

In my last post I said that I don't like tulips. I guess I should have written it a bit different. I like tulips in my garden or in a vase on the table (hey, I am Dutch you know) but I just don't like painting them. I don't like painting flowers in general. Too much showing off their beauty or something.

Sometimes, however, you have to paint other things too. Tulips for me is something new and different. Lots of colour and smooth shapes. It's definitely stepping out of my comfort zone.

Today I painted an orange tulip. Very Dutch, being a tulip and being orange. It was fun. This one was bending over a bit so you could almost look inside. This showed the overlapping petals more than the previous tulip I did. To give the tulip more depth I made the shadow parts really dark. I always like a bit of drama ;)

Spring please...

2010-03-13T01:28:00.004+01:00

I've so had it with this winter. It was too cold and too dark for too long. I really need spring now. To get myself a bit of spring-feeling I bought loads of tulips this week.

Next month I'll join a botanical painting course again. This time the tutor will be Anne-Marie Evans. The theme that week will be tulips. I'm not a tulip fan. I never painted them before. Well, I had to last year in the previous course. But never voluntarily.

Today I did. One of my tulips is now also a watercolour. I thought it would be good to get some practice with my watercolours and the tulips before the course. There will be more tulips to come. Anyway....This is a very girlie one but it was fun to paint. Hope you like it too :)

Scarlet Elf Cups

2010-03-09T00:15:00.000+01:00

Winter seems a strange period to go hunting for mushrooms. But there are a few that only can be found in this period of the year. The Scarlet Elf Cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea) is one of them. It loves snow and freezing temperatures. This fungus grows on decaying branches in damp spots on forests floor. It's a rare fungus in the Netherlands... or so they say. Winter, snow, freezing cold and crawling under bushes isn't a very pleasant combination for most people, so it's not surprising it's not such a common sight.

I painted this little group of Scarlet Elf Cups like they were found. On the branches, with moss and dead leaves. I first painted the Fungi because I knew they loved the cold and damp.... not my dry and warm studio. The interior of the cups is bright red and very smooth. The outside is lighter and orange. later they turned even lighter, almost white. Maybe that had something to do with the dry, warm air. They are quite small, about 2 cm.
The hardest part was to paint the moss around the mushrooms. So delicate and fluffy. But I decided not to get into details too much since the focus should be on the fungi. I think I managed to do it. Creating this very tiny little world from the forest floor.

Don't bug me now!

2010-02-22T02:40:00.001+01:00

I don't feel like painting crocusses and snowdrops now. I wanted to do something colourful yet not a big project.... A friend of mine sugested to make some insects. I never did that before. Not seriously anyway. So I thought I'd try painting some bugs with watercolours. It didn't work out at all. So, instead of throwing it in the bin I saved it with my coloured pencils. Here's my first little bug:

This is Chrysolina fastuosa. In normal English: the Dead Nettle Leaf Beetle. It's a very common beetle in the Netherlands and oh so pretty. It was hard to draw the metalic shine and the little dimples on the shield. I must add that this image is huge compared to the original drawing. The drawing is made life size (=very small = 1,5 cm = about 0,6") So in this scan it might seem that it has got hairs, in the small drawing it just has little dimples :))

I liked this so much I decided to do another bug today. A bigger one and maybe one of my favourites. Not because it's so beautiful (besides it's hairdo it really isn't that pretty) but because I always look forward to seeing the first in my garden. Always in May.

It's the May Beetle or Cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha). I made mine 3 cm (a bit over 1 inch) tall (they can be a bit bigger though). Not very happy with the texture on the brown shields. It looks too smooth... and it really is not. Never mind.... I had fun and there is a lot more white paper to be filled with creepy crawlers...

And then there were two...

2010-01-19T23:22:00.000+01:00

One Braeburn apple seemed a bit lonely.... so now there are two. Cute, huh?

I think that pears will be next :)

Update!

2010-01-16T14:30:00.000+01:00

Ok, I know, I'm a bad blogger, sorry for that. But to make it up here's an update. I was so busy these last few weeks to get my Hydrangea finished in time. And guess what... it's FINISHED!!!!! Yay for me :) I sent it to the National Herbarium this week and it went straight to the photographer from there. It will be photographed for the flyer and catalogue or something. Anyway, I managed to scan the big drawing (in 4 parts) and after merging the scans together, here's the result of all the hard labour:

I was so relieved when the drawing was gone I just had to do something fun and easy. So I bought a very nice red apple. Yesterday I sat down and in one afternoon (ok, and part of the evening) I finished the "Braeburn Apple" with coloured pencils. It was so good to do something with a simple shape and such rich, deep colours.

Don't know what I'll do now. Maybe I'll add one or two apples to that first one. It seems a bit lonely on the paper. And doing it was great fun, really....
On the other hand I'd love to do something with my watercolours again too. But whatever it will be, it's going to be small and fun :)

Carambolas

2009-12-13T20:44:00.000+01:00

It has been too long since I posted something. I was just too busy taking care of sick children and going on a holiday. But yesterday I finally found some time to paint something again. On Flickr, in the *Watercolourist, Painting with light* group there was a nice challenge photo. Two carambolas (or starfruit). The colours were so bright. Green colours, almost toxic, you don't always see in nature. So I thought this would be a lot of fun to explore the greens.

I soon found that the best, most explosive green I could get was by mixing Winsor&Newton's Lemon Yellow and Hookers Green. For the shades I used Indigo, Caput Mortuum with the green. The browns were Raw Umber and some Burnt Sienna. Some small details were added at the end using a bit of Sepia.

Gosh, this was really fun!

Fungi family

2009-10-29T21:47:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I was in the beautiful forest of Roden. There were thousands of mushrooms, so many different kinds and all so pretty. I made some photos so I could maybe draw them at home. Bertus was with me so I couldn't sketch there. I picked this one for a drawing. It's not very detailed. I just don't have enough time and energy to do that. I made it on (bad) paper with coloured pencils and soft pastels.

Quince

2009-09-27T20:31:00.014+02:00

Yesterday Michiel Thomas, a friend I met on Flickr, came to my house to buy one of my drawings. He brought me a large branch from his Quince he has in his garden. On the branch were 3 quinces and I decided to draw one of them. I first made the sketch and today I added the colours. Here it is :)

Autumn

2009-09-24T00:11:00.004+02:00

I love Autumn. But then again, I suppose all botanical artists love autumn. So much going on, so many beautiful colours, not to mention all the fruits and seeds...
In my previous post you could read I'm working a bit more with watercolours now. Also trying out some things to combine the coloured pencils and watercolours. Valerie Oxley told us that it shouldn't matter how we come to a good result, as long as we get a good result. I got to experiment with that when I made a watercolour of the rose hips of one of my roses, Rosa moyesii 'Geranium'.

I started to make a watercolour of it. But in the end I wasn't totally happy with the way it looked. I worked a bit too much in the red and it got a bit grainy and muddy. I remembered what Valerie told us and thought 'why not'.
I got some coloured pencils out and saved the painting. It looks much better now and I'm glad I did what I did.

Next I tried to make a painting of a rose hip I picked from my Rosa glauca. That didn't work. AT ALL. It was hopeless, even my pencils couldn't make that one better. So this time I made the rose hip again, now using only coloured pencils. Sometimes things just don't go as you plan it I guess. But it doesn't matter... as long as you get a nice result in the end.

Now I need to think about what to make next... it's autumn and there's so much choice...

Watercolours

2009-09-15T01:04:00.003+02:00

As you probably know, I work a lot with coloured pencils. I never liked watercolours very much... or the watercolours didn't like me... I don't know. Anyway, painting with watercolours always was a struggle and never fun to do. I found my coloured pencil more friendly and willing to work with me. Lately I started to paint a bit more. I think it was after the botanical art course with Valerie Oxley this spring. She showed some tricks and ways how to deal with various problems. It inspired me to pick up my brushes again and try some small things. You've seen the Blackberry and Redcurrants. They worked out surprisingly well. I have no idea why it is going so much better than before. Maybe it's because I take my time and use less colours when I mix my colours. Lately I've done two more paintings. One large and one small and still in progress. Actually I think I won't finish it this year because I have other, more important, stuff to finish too. To be honest, the first, large painting, isn't finished either... here it is:

These are the berries of the Arum italicum. Now, I must add that these berries are no longer floating around. I've added the stem last weekend. The bright orange colours were very new for me. I never did something so extremely orange before. The most beautiful orange I got from mixing Opera Rose with Cadmium Yellow (both W&N). Some berries have some Cadmium Red deep hue glazed over them, some have a bit of Opera rose or Cadmium Yellow glaze. The green was even harder. It stayed too mossy... too yellow... finally I tried to make it better by glazing with a bit of Hookers Green mixed with Lemon Yellow. That did it.

The other painting is going to be a bit of a project. I started it last weekend while I was demonstrating Botanical painting in my favourite nursery "De Kleine Plantage" in Eenrum. In the gardens were a lot of Hydrangeas. The most spectacular colour of deep dark red I found on Hydrangea serrata 'Grayswood'.

I picked some of the most interesting flowers off the shrub (naughty me) and painted them.

Now I want to paint a lot more of these flowers with these amazing colours on the sheet. Like they are sprinkled on the paper. I think it will look very nice.

Now, I'm not going to switch over entirely to watercolours. I love the pencils too. But it was a nice surprise to see the painting is going so much better now, with less struggles and with more fun than before....

Schiermonnikoog

2009-08-27T10:40:00.003+02:00

Last week we returned from our holidays on Schiermonnikoog. It's a small island in the North of the Netherlands between the Northsea and the Waddensea. Since June 2009 the Waddensea is placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. UNESCO uses several different criteria to assess whether an area merits World Heritage Site status. It deemed the Waddensea to be globally unique in at least three of those criteria.

Of the islands in the Waddensea, Schiermonnikoog holds a very special position. The entire island is a National Park, a special natural region that must be well protected.
Half of the wild plants registered in the Netherlands can be found on this small island.
I love to visit Schiermonnikoog every year. It's peaceful and there's so much nature. And although it's small, it never gets boring. I always take my watercolours with me. This year I wanted to paint some smaller plants on the island.
The first one I painted was the tiny and delicate Seaside Pansy (Viola curtisii).

The next day I spotted another small plant, becoming more rare very rapidly in my country. It's the Red Bartsia (Odontites vernus subsp. serotinus).

Another plant I painted was much more common but very pretty. It's the Selfheal (Prunella vulgaris).

Finally I painted a plant which I wanted to paint for years now. It's a protected plant and very scarce in the Netherlands. Its the Parnassia palustris or maybe better known as Grass of Parnassus.

Maybe next year I'll paint some plants from the salt marshes.

Redcurrants in watercolour

2009-08-09T20:50:00.004+02:00

Another watercolour today. The last redcurrants I picked in my garden and after trying them with coloured pencil I made them today in watercolour. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Blackberry

2009-08-06T00:30:00.001+02:00

This week it's so hot and the air is humid and unpleasant. So not much drawing because of that. But this evening I made this watercolour. It's a Blackberry from my garden ('Thornless Evergreen') and it is very small. About 1 square inch (2,5 x 2,5 cm). It was fun to play with my brushes again.

Update

2009-08-05T02:23:00.003+02:00

I'm still working on my Hydrangea drawing for the von Siebold project. It is so difficult. Really hard. I made some flowers first. Hard!!!

Then I thought it would be good to add some leaves. Harder!!!! And last weekend I was at the point where I had to make a big decision about the composition by placing a third flowerhead in the drawing. Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!

And it's not over yet... I have to do a lot of work still on all three flowerheads, I need to add even more leaves and the stems of course....
I've had some fights with this drawing, it has been the most difficult drawing I ever made.

I'm sure there will be more fights (and some more tears to go with it too I suppose) over the next couple of weeks. But I'm happy to say that I'm finally getting the feeling it might be a nice piece when I'll be finished.

Currants

2009-07-29T01:11:00.001+02:00

I have a lot of currants (Ribes rubrum) in my garden right now. And I finally got to draw them this year. Previous years the Blackbirds where faster than me and ate my subject. Well, not the white ones but they really enjoy to hang around the red berries.
I'm still working hard on my Hydrangea drawing so this was a nice interlude. I made the white ones first, as a birthday present for a good friend of mine. It was made in one afternoon and it felt very good doing this. I decided to also draw the red ones. More difficult but less beautiful. Not only my drawing but also the real thing. The white berries are more transparent and therefor much more interesting. And drawing something transparent and white is a big challenge. But I think I did okay...

Von Siebold Project

2009-07-09T15:36:00.003+02:00

At the moment I'm working hard on a drawing for the Von Siebold Exhibition which will be held in Het Von Sieboldhuis in Leiden. It's an exhibition about the plants Von Siebold brought from Japan to Europe. Drawings from that era will hang next to botanical drawings made by artists from the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. During this exhibition there will also be a special walk around the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden where a lot of his plants were planted when Von Siebold returned to Europe.

The artists from the society got a long list of plants in the Hortus. We all could pick one or two plants to draw. I picked the Hydrangea. It's a shrub I think I would never draw for fun. Too much flowers I guess. But this is a nice oppertunity to try something different. So I thought...

This Hydrangea is so difficult and it's a huge struggle. The sketching was easy and fast. I drew 3 twigs with flowers. The next stage was to make a good composition on the paper. The size of the image is the same for all artists (about 32 x 40 cm).

I tried out a little flower first to choose the right colours. That was ok. Now I'm working on my first big flowerhead on the bottom left. It is more blue than the little practice flower I did before. And after a few flowers the colours looked too dirty for me.

Now I'm trying a different approach: colours first, shadows later. I hope it will work.
Sorry for the bad pictures, I can't scan this and have to use my little camera and Photoshop. I will scan the end result though :)

If it will finish and not end up in the dustbin.

Finished!

2009-06-28T21:37:00.005+02:00

It took a while but now the drawing of my Honeybells is more or less finished. This evening I scanned the drawing in 3 parts and I merged them together in Photoshop. The stems need a bit more work but the rest is finished. I'm happy this is done because my next project (also a big one) has started to flower this week.

Oh, and PLEASE klick on the image to open it in Flickr and then click on the link to view it large on white.

Burnet ~ Sanguisorba

2009-06-27T18:36:00.004+02:00

I love Sanguisorba... I have a few different varieties in my garden and they are starting to flower now. I can't get enough of them. The first one is Sanguisorba officinalis 'Rock and Roll' the other one here is Sanguisorba 'Chocolat Tip'.

More progress

2009-06-22T23:17:00.003+02:00

The last couple of days I've worked hard on my big Nectaroscordum drawing. Three of the flowerheads are now, more or less, finished. It's difficult and hard work. I made some photos again to show you what it looks like now. First the entire sheet:

You can see that the right flower is now finished. I've started to draw the buds on the left too. And they are also nearly done. The third is now work in progress and I hope, at the end of the week to start with the last flower. I'm not sure about the placement of the stems but there is nothing I can do about that now....

Cherry

2009-06-20T17:28:00.005+02:00

This morning I saw a beautiful painting of some cherries a contact of mine (nas740) made in watercolour. This afternoon I had a bowl of cherries on my drawing table and thought I'd give it a go. Here is just one. But it was fun to do because the great dark deep colours and when the drawing was finished it was tasty too :))

Dark side

2009-06-20T14:57:00.004+02:00

Come over to the dark side... of my garden that is. Thought I'd make a dark version of the garden photos too. It actually is rather fun to do :)

Thanks Heidi for your sweet words! I'm feeling much better because of them :*

Pastel Garden

2009-06-20T00:32:00.004+02:00

I wasn't feeling that well this week. Actually, I'm not feeling well at all for the last ... months. I had some good periods but overall it has been a bit hard lately. So this week, again, I had a bad week and I was very tired. I wanted to draw, I did draw... but the drawing is not going that well if I'm not feeling okay. When I'm not able to draw I like to play a bit with Photoshop. I decided to make this mosaic. These are all small details from photos I made in my garden.

Nectaroscurdum siculum

2009-06-14T14:15:00.003+02:00

I'm trying to work on a project now. It's a bud of the Nectaroscordum siculum in my garden. The bud is opening and the flowers start to come out and bend down gracefully. It's a beautiful process. I did make a small try (well actually not small, it's 1:1) of a bud first:

I made drawings of five stages. I placed them next to each other on the Fabriano and now I have to colour them. It takes a long time and I am very busy doing a lot of other things as well.

But I alsmost finished the first part. The open flower (yes I'm working backwards). The flower was still in my garden and the buds were all gone. I made a lot of photos from the buds so I can work from that. But as long as I had the real thing I could use that. So that's why I started with the last one in the row.

Rosa glauca

2009-06-02T01:11:00.004+02:00

The last two days I was working on a drawing of one of my favourite roses. Rosa glauca. It's a botanical rose with small pink flowers. The leaves are spectacular: grey green with a bit of dark red in the veins and stems. In the autumn the rose has a lot of dark red hips. It's wonderful. I made a drawing of the hips two years ago. I will probably do another one this year or next year since I've sold the first.

The rose is flowering only for a very short period and I had to work fast for this drawing. This morning yesterday's flower had dropped it's petals. I'm happy with the flower and I think the pink resembles the true colour very well. Also the buds and the stem (or branch) are very good I think. The leaves however are a bit of a problem. I don't like doing leaves and the colour of these leaves is very difficult. I managed to draw two leaves and I hope the pink of the flower and the red of the branch will distract the attention from the leaves a bit.

Oh, and about the rose... it's called Rosa glauca, which means Red-leaved rose. The front of the leaf is grey- green but the backside of the leaf is a bit reddish. The veins are red too. It is a species of rose native to the mountains of central and southern Europe.

Rose 'Heritage'

2009-05-31T16:44:00.003+02:00

I have this wonderful rose on my table. I'm drawing another rose at the moment but this one has such a wonderful smell...

Thorns

2009-05-28T20:55:00.003+02:00

This is the last drawing I'll show you of my botanical drawing course with Valerie Oxley, three weeks ago. Valerie told us a few remarkable things about the difference between thorns, prickles and spines. She wanted us to make sketches of them. She brought all sorts of painful subjects. Like roses (of course) thistles and Pyracantha (Firethorn). I made a few sketches but I didn't want to make one page with the different branches and leaves. I wanted to end the course in colour and decided to make a coloured pencil drawing of a Berberis twig. I finished the drawing when I got home. I really like this one. The sharp pointy thorns and the beautiful colours were a lot of fun to draw.

The drawing I will not show you is the drawing I made of a Stachys leaf. We learned a few things about painting and drawing hairy and silver coloured leaves. The drawing wasn't very good. Maybe with a bit more experimenting with the different techniques I will come up with a good result but this leaf was a bad experience. The thing I learned that day was that I don't like to draw hairy and silver coloured leaves.

Anyway.... This course was a lot of fun. I met some very nice people again and Valerie Oxley taught me some very good things. I hope you enjoyed this too :)

A leaf

2009-05-18T21:55:00.001+02:00

I promissed to show you some more results from my botanical drawing course. On Tuesday we did a practice with leaves. How to draw and paint twisted, folded and turned leaves. Most of the ladies in the course made a drawing/painting of a hosta or Persicaria leaf. I was the only one drawing this leaf. The woman who brought this leaf to the course told me it was a Helianthus leaf. But I have big doubts about that. But it doesn't matter very much. It's only a practice after all.

Greens are difficult and leaves can be so very, very hard to draw well. Actually I admire artists that paint a lot of foliage. To paint one or two beautiful leaves is great of course. But to paint a whole bunch of them and do them perfectly.... sigh..... I just don't have the patience to do that.

Anyway... Here's the drawing. Coloured pencil again. And I must say that I'm pretty pleased with it. The fade-away distant colours just happened. I didn't think too much about that.

I had some trouble with the pencils though. The tutor, Valerie Oxley, brought some pencils to the course. I could use them if I wanted to. A nice way to try out some other brands. I tried some greens from the Derwent Coloursoft series. I wish I hadn't. I picked a beautiful Dark Green colour. A super colour for the shadow parts in this leaf. But when I burnished some of it with my white pencil the green turned into a viridian/ cobalt blue greenish colour. Very bright. I tried to get it all out of the leaf, but as you can see... here and there I couldn't. Never mind. It was a good practice and now I'm very sure I don't like the Derwent coloursoft pencils.

Yellow

2009-05-16T18:27:00.000+02:00

Last week I joined a 5 day botanical drawing course. My tutor that week was the wonderful Valerie Oxley. The Dutch Society of Botanical Artists invited her over for this masterclass. Every day we practiced a different subject of botanical painting and drawing.

We started on Monday with yellow flowers. Yellow flowers artists often avoid because they are a bit tricky. Not me... I avoided yellow flowers just because I don't like them. But that day there was no excuse, we had to do a yellow flower. A tulip.
The first drawing we did was done by putting in the shadows first and then the colours. (I forgot to tell you that there were people working with watercolour and also some people worked with coloured pencils. I was very happy I wasn't the only one using the pencils) The second drawing was the other way around. You can see here the first drawing on the left and the second drawing on the right.

In the first drawing I used greys for the shadow parts. In the second drawing I used a bit of light violet and warm grey in the darker parts. As always with light coloured flowers (or any other subject with a light colour) I concluded that it's better to work in the shadows later because you have more controle over the colours.

I had fun doing this practice although I still don't like yellow flowers. And I also still believe that yellow tulips is the closest you can get to a plastic-flower-look. Later this week I'll post some more drawings and sketches I made during this course.

Blackthorn

2009-04-11T19:19:00.005+02:00

Ever since I saw the drawing by Cicely Mary Barker of the Blackthorn Fairy I love this tree. From the livingroom window I can see one blossoming now. It has something wild, natural, pure and romantic about it. I am not crazy about white flowers or white blossoms but I absolutely love this one.... and still love that wild Flower Fairy too btw :)

Romantic

2009-04-01T00:53:00.006+02:00

I'm feeling a bit romantic every time I see my Prunus blossom in my garden. I so very much love this little tree.... I made a drawing of it once and a watercolour too (blogged that here). Maybe it's because I just can't get enough of it.
Oh... btw... this is Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis' again :)

Magnolia

2009-03-24T22:21:00.005+01:00

Last weekend I was in Breukelen to visit my parents. I always visit my parents at the end of March because my father is having his birthday. So every year I see the beautiful Magnolia tree in my mother's garden and I love it. I always loved it. It is a small one because they have a small garden but the shape is so nice and I love to sit under it. When you look up at this time of the year you'll see this:

It reminds me of a painting I loved as a child:

It's the "Bloeiende Amandelboom" (Almond Blossom, 1890) by Vincent van Gogh. I haven't seen the real thing for some years now. I'm not sure it still is one of my favorites.

Maybe I liked it because it reminded me of my mother's Magnolia :)

in my garden

2009-03-09T21:27:00.004+01:00

This week finally it started to look and feel a bit like spring. The wind is still cold but it was sunny. Today is was raining and snowing again though.... Anyway, the photos I made were taken last week and not today. At last I have some real signs of spring. My first Crocuses are blooming, the snowdrops of course, a lot of plants are making their first leaves and.... my first flowers on the Pulmonarias are here (although it looks like they are shivering in the cold wind).

Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant'

Euphorbia griffithii 'Fireglow'

Akebia quinata bud

Of course I need to clean up the garden. All the dead plants and leaves from last year are still covering the ground. But before I remove it I'll admire the beauty of last years garden.

The seeds of Anemone 'Hadspen Abudance' are now turning into cotton balls.

The seed heads of the Wild Teasel from last year are still standing in the afternoon sun....

Hazel Catkins

2009-02-26T16:33:00.003+01:00

This morning the weather was beautiful. A clear blue sky and a wonderful sun. Only the wind was cold and strong. I decided to take Bertus outside in the garden. My Hazel is full of dangling catkins for some weeks now and I really wanted to make a photo of it before it was too late.

Is spring coming?

2009-02-16T19:30:00.007+01:00

They say it will come.... It's doesn't feel like spring is coming though.... BUT the snowdrops are starting to flower here and for that reason I wanted to show you this little drop:

I made this one a couple of years ago and it was a difficult drawing because it's white. White is always difficult. It was the first in a series of flowering bulb drawings (still working on it btw). This is made on Bristol paper (I don't work on Bristol anymore, but back then I only used Bristol paper).

Just a quick update on the Alder drawing:

Not finished yet, but I'm getting there. It is such a difficult subject. It has so many different directions, shapes and textures. I hope to finish it this week.

Yesssssssssss

2009-02-08T21:32:00.001+01:00

Today I worked hard on the Alder branch. And it went well. But I must say it is maybe one of the most difficult subjects I've done so far.

Anyway... this is just the beginning. It's going to be a big drawing. I hope I'll finish it.

No progress today...

2009-02-07T17:54:00.006+01:00

I am working on a large drawing of a branch of the Black Alder tree. It took me one day to make the sketch and get the drawing on the Fabriano. Today the drawing wasn't leading me anywhere. That's very frustrating. I used to keep on working, hoping it would look alright in the end. But most of the time that ended up in a ruined drawing and tears. So, having learned from my mistakes, I decided to stop the drawing for today. It's not good to mess the drawing up now (as if it ever is a good time to mess it up).

I thought I would do some crocheting instead. I am making a cat. And since it is a bit cold, the cat needs a scarf. I made her a grey spiral scarf but it was too dull for her. So now I've made another one. It's purple.... I guess I will have to make a second cat to match the grey scarf...

Aaah, life is hard.....

Winter Buds of Cornus mas

2009-02-01T19:13:00.004+01:00

I first had no idea what kind of shrub this was but my friend Michiel Thomas helped me with that. It's a European Cornel, one of the Dogwood family. It was planted beside the road in our village and I liked it. It will get very yellow flowers soon, but for now it is still looking very pretty (I don't like very yellow flowers).

My first coloured pencil drawing after the surgery. Not a masterpiece. But I'll keep trying.

Coloured pencil on Fabriano designo 5 Liscia paper. 25 x 11 cm (the branch)

Check out the large size: View On White

Arum

2009-01-29T18:54:00.004+01:00

I found some drawings last week in an "old" sketchbook. Amongst them was this sketch of an Arum italicum. I made this drawing in October or November last year. This is the moment the Arum makes new foliage. The entire winter it stays green and in the end of spring, beginning of the summer there are huge "flowers" hidden between the leaves. At the end of the summer and in the autumn, the foliage dies and the cones (first hidden inside the flowers) are covered with large orange berries. It is not a very healthy plant (poisonous) but it's very beautiful and interesting all year round.
My idea is to make a drawing of this plant in all these stages. So here's the rhizome and a fresh young leaf. Next I want to draw the flower and finally the orange cone. Not very original I know, there have been hundreds of artists before me that did the same thing. But I just love this plant.

Foot

2009-01-09T01:54:00.005+01:00

Last week I started to draw in my new sketchbook. After some weeks of pain in my wrist, I am very happy to say, the pain is almost gone. Of course I can't do everything yet, and some sudden moves still hurt but, most of the time, the wrist is painless. I still can't bend it very well though and that's the reason why I'm not touching my coloured pencils just yet.
This week however, I did my first drawings with graphite pencils. First I made a drawing of Bertus. I made it from a photo. Normally I don't work from photos but Bertus just can't keep still (and I really doubt if he ever will). It is Bertus playing on the beach of Schiermonnikoog last summer. His first time he saw the beach and the sea.

The next drawing I made was a botanical one. Small, but nice. It is a branch from the Climbing Hydrangea next too our front door. It really isn't big....

And yesterday evening I decided to draw my foot. On Flickr there are a lot of people now uploading self portraits. Very nice.... but I am just so scared of drawing my face. I know it will frustrate me enormously. It will drive me absolutely mad.... So this is my self portrait. My foot. And so I started to draw my right foot. I had never made a drawing of my foot before and frankly I thought it would end up in the dust bin. But it didn't. It actually went really well. And after sketching my foot I sketched my ankle, also good enough.... So I sketched some more, calf, knee, thighs... stop... hold on.... Thighs????? Oops, that was a lot of foot!!!!! I just didn't know where to stop. Lucky for me and the rest of the world, the paper stopped before I could. So the thighs is the end of the foot drawing.
Anyway.... I am pretty pleased with this first drawing of my "foot" ;-)

Heuchera brizoides "Melting Fire"

2008-12-31T12:26:00.003+01:00

Have a wonderful 2009 everybody!!!

Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis'

2008-12-29T01:10:00.007+01:00

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!!!

2008-12-25T14:18:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-21T13:46:00.007+01:00

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

2008-12-12T20:09:00.005+01:00

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

2008-12-12T17:30:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-11T13:52:00.004+01:00

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

2008-12-04T20:05:00.002+01:00

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

2008-11-10T01:54:00.001+01:00

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

2008-10-27T17:24:00.004+01:00

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

2008-10-27T15:38:00.004+01:00

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

2008-10-26T21:05:00.010+01:00

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

2008-10-12T20:57:00.005+02:00

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 !!!

2008-09-24T11:38:00.004+02:00

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'

2008-09-16T01:16:00.004+02:00

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

Eenrum

2008-09-15T10:24:00.005+02:00

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

2008-08-29T19:09:00.008+02:00

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

2008-08-25T10:38:00.021+02:00

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

2008-08-13T13:41:00.003+02:00

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

2008-08-10T21:37:00.016+02:00

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

2008-08-09T13:43:00.008+02:00

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

2008-08-08T15:46:00.005+02:00

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.

Little Nell

2008-08-06T13:31:00.006+02:00

No bark this time. I'm having the day off. Or maybe this evening... But I'm very tired. This afternoon I have to take the children to Groningen to meet Jeroen. We'll be looking for a birthday present for me. I would like to have a small compact digital camera that I can take with me in my handbag. Now I use an enormous camera. It takes wonderful photo's but is also very heavy. I hope the children will be a little bit cooperative. Ward was very grumpy when I told him we had to go to Groningen. It makes me sad... But I guess that's also because I'm tired of all the drawing, the running around to keep an eye on Bertus, doing the laundry, the washing up and prevent the house from getting one big mess.
So, to cheer me up a bit I thought I should post a photo that makes me happy. I took this one last week. It's Clematis viticella 'Little Nell'.

This Clematis is always doing great, every year it's full of flowers. But this year it is absolutely amazing. It has never flowered this good before. My Wisteria is having some late flowers too and the colours complement each other very nicely.

Bark, bark, bark!

2008-08-05T22:25:00.002+02:00

Today I've been working on my bark again. More and more layers are added again. It's starting to look like it's going somewhere now...

quick bark update

2008-08-04T21:28:00.005+02:00

My second post today but I thought I'd let you know how my bark is doing. Well, I'm still adding more layers of colour. More shading, more detailing, more sharpening of the edges.

Roses

2008-08-04T16:27:00.007+02:00

I love roses. I haven't counted my roses but I have a few in my garden. Shall I name them? Oh well, why not :~)

There is of course 'New Dawn'. That's the first rose I ever bought. Strong and survives everything (hot summers, hard pruning, dry grounds, shadow gardens). And she is still very nice.
Rosa Glauca, I mentioned her in an earlier post. One of my favorites. Nice foliage, lovely small pink flowers, beautiful hips in autumn and winter.
I've also mentioned 'Heritage' before. This is one of three Austin roses I have. The other two are 'Abraham Darby' and 'the Squire'.

'Abraham Darby' (photo above) is a beauty and has a great scent. 'the Squire' (which is no longer available I think) is a difficult one. The colour is very deep dark red, almost black sometimes. It smells wonderful, but it hardly has any leaves, it has a lot of thorns and it just looks like it's going to die any moment. Not a very happy rose.
Is that it? Nooooo! I'm just getting started. I also have a lady called 'Mme. Alfred Carrière'.

Actually I have two of her. Perfect climber, flowers all summer long and very healthy green foliage.
Another strong and beautiful climber is 'Lykkefund', maybe this is my favorite. Lot of small creamy white flowers with warm yellow centres. It has no thorns but it has very nice orange rose hips in the autumn. Oh, and very nice scented too!

But... I have also 'Moonlight'. Maybe that's my favorite...

The young foliage is red, so are the new branches. Later on the foliage gets dark green, not too big and looks very healthy. The flowers are very nice too. Creamy white. Lightly scented. But the foliage.... just wonderful!
Then there is 'Desprez a Fleur Jaunes'. Sadly this one doesn't seem to like it very much in my garden. It hardly gets any flowers and it looks a bit ill to me. Maybe I should try it somewhere else.
'Paul's Scarlet Climber' is in my front garden. Since two years a blackbird nests in it. Very wise decision to nest in that rose with our cat Murkje wandering about. This rose is... Scarlet, how did you guess? Not a good colour for the back garden but very good for the front.
Finally there is Rosa moyesii 'Geranium' in the front garden. Very fine feathery leaves, beautiful red flowers and big orange bottle shaped hips.
I said finally but I remember now that there are two more roses in my garden. They both belonged to my grandfather. They are both pink and both have very large flowers. My grandfather liked roses like that. And I must admit that they look like roses should: like roses ;~D

I think that's it. If I've counted correctly that makes 13 different kinds of roses. Maybe there are even more, I guess there are...

Birds of prey

2008-08-03T22:50:00.008+02:00

Today my parents visited us. We went to a bird show. There where all kinds of birds of prey. A tiny fluffy owl, a falcon, two kinds of vultures and this big eagle owl.

It's magnificent to see these birds up close and in flight. Very impressive. It was mostly a show for the kids. The man who owned the birds told some things about them, but it was obvious that he had told the same jokes for years. They weren't funny anymore. But hey, we came to see the birds and they where great... ;~)
Oh, before he gets mad at me... Ward took this photo and allowed me to share it with you. Nice Wardie!

The first stages

2008-07-31T13:52:00.013+02:00

As I said, I've been drawing my bark with coloured pencil. It's not finished yet, Bertus won't let me draw. But when he's asleep in the afternoon, I have a few hours to draw a little. And after dinner there is also an hour left for me to draw. And here are the results of the first stages of the drawing. It's a difficult piece of bark with all these flakes. But that's what makes it interesting. First I have to draw the basic outlines of the hole thing. I added also some obvious shadow parts so I wouldn't get lost while I was drawing.

The second thing I did was to add more shadows and add more colour in the shadow parts. This will give it more depth then just a simple gray layer.

After finishing most of the shadow parts I started in one corner to layer colours and blend them together. Added more details to it.

And that's where I am right now. Hopefully I can do a bit more today, although it is very warm today. We're playing outside most of the time today. It's okay to sit in the shadow under the trees and Bertus can play with water there.

Veronicastrum virginicum 'Diana' is a smaller variety of my Veronicastrums. While the other, taller ones have barely any flowers left, this white beauty is just starting to bloom. It is standing in a spot where is more shadow. I guess that's the reason why.

Another thing I noticed today is my Rosa Glauca. She thinks that it's almost autumn so it seems. The rose hips are starting to turn red and dark, the leaves are turning yellow.

It's all going so fast in this dry and hot weather... Thankfully an other rose thinks it's springtime. 'Moonlight' is getting a lot of red young, fresh shoots and leaves. Beautiful to see it when the sun is shining through.

Small Project

2008-07-30T00:05:00.005+02:00

After all the fun that I had painting the piece of Pine bark, I've decided to do a coloured pencil version of it too. Not to compare the two of them (but I'm sure everybody will do that anyway), but I just think it will be better than the watercolour. Actually I know it will be better. It has to be better.

So I've started to draw the same piece of bark on a piece of Fabriano 5. The next few days will be filled with Bertus and this drawing. I'll try to take photos of the drawing while it progresses. Hopefully it won't be a big disappointment in the end.

The July Garden

2008-07-27T18:06:00.004+02:00

It's so much fun discovering Flickr and it's possibilities. Like the mosaic toy. I've made two mosaics now. One of our stay on Schiermonnikoog and this one of the flowers that are flowering now in my garden. I love the colour scheme.

I've already had some very nice reactions on my drawings and my photos. That's nice. I hope some people will find their way to my blog as well.

Bark

2008-07-26T18:06:00.003+02:00

On the first day on Schiermonnikoog I found this piece of bark of a Pine tree. It was a perfect project for the moments we had to stay in our house. When Bertus was sleeping or when it was raining, or just a bit too cold to paint outdoors. It's not finished yet but wanted to show it to you anyway. It's a watercolour by the way. Something I normally don't do, only when I'm on vacation.

Back from Schiermonnikoog

2008-07-25T22:56:00.013+02:00

Last week we were on vacation. We went to an island called Schiermonnikoog. It's the most northern part of the Netherlands and not far from where we live.

There are no cars allowed on the island so we took our bicycles. At the start of the week it wasn't very warm. We had some rain at night and in the morning but in the afternoon we could go out and explore.

It was Bertus' first time to the seaside so we took him straight away to see the North sea and the beach. (on the photo above you can see Bertus having a close encounter with a seagull) It was very windy but that didn't mind a bit. In the evenings Ward went with me biking through the dunes. On one of the first evenings we went to the west coast of Schiermonnikoog to view the Wad. The sun was carefully shining through the grey clouds and it was low tide. On the horizon we could see Ameland, the island next door. It was beautiful, Ward kept on telling me how wonderful everything was. And he was right!

During the day I biked across the island solo. Mostly to find an interesting spot where I could sit and paint. I rarely paint, but on vacation I like to pick up my brushes and dust of my watercolour palette. This is one of the things I made:

On Thursday morning Jeroen took Ward and Bertus for a walk in the forrest.

According to the photo's they took and the stories they told they had a great time. Bertus wanted to do most of the walking by himself. Up the dunes and down the dunes again.

Ward and I also went to the beach one afternoon to find some cockles. Ward found out a really good way to find them in the sand. Soon our little bucket was filled. That evening we had pasta with cockles on our plates. It was very nice. Bertus wanted to eat them all!

On Friday it was warm but very windy. We went to the beach again. The wind by the sea was to cold for Bertus. But we found a small puddle closer to the dunes with some warm water in it. Bertus had the time of his life! He had so much fun in the dirty sand...

The next day we had to go home (today). It's always a little bit sad to leave Schiermonnikoog. No cars, no computer, no work to be done, no television (although we had one in our small house)... Just nature, books, paint and each other.

More photo's of our stay on Schiermonnikoog are on my Flickr photo stream.

This is Bertus

2008-07-17T00:33:00.006+02:00

Meet my youngest: Bertus. Very naughty! But also very cute with his mothers sunglasses. We are heading for Schiermonnikoog on friday. So blog you in about 10 days!

In Bloom

2008-07-15T21:25:00.012+02:00

I've been working on my blog to give it a better look. It's improving step by step. Today my brother, his girlfriend and their two kids came to visit. But although the house was full and everyone was quite busy playing, I did find some time to take some photo's in the garden. I discovered a Daylily that never bloomed before. My mother gave me this one last year.

I thought that it was 'Catherine Woodbury', but apparently it's not. I don't know it's name. It looks a bit like 'Mama Cha Cha' or 'Coral Lace' but I'm not sure.

I also noticed Clematis 'My Angel' covered with tiny pretty flowers.

And what about this beautiful Hydrangea? It's Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'. A very nice one. Big greenish white perfect flowers.

And finally I spotted this in the border:

Here are Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination' and Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Summer Dance'. I love Veronicastrums and Persicarias. Ican't explane why, I just do...

Hello There!

2008-07-14T00:46:00.010+02:00

Finally I've made the big step into bloggingland. I've had my own site for a while now and I thought that it might be time to start a blog as well. So here it is...
Maybe I should tell you a bit about myself first. I live in the Netherlands (so please, don't mind the mistakes in my writing to much). I'm married to Jeroen and we have two boys, Ward (11) and Bertus (1), Yes I know, it's quite a gap... Oh, we also have two lovely cats Miep and Murk. You'll probably see them on some photo's in the posts to come.

One of the things I want to share with you is my work. I'm a botanical artist. I love plants, I love to draw them, I love to plant them, I love to buy them, I love to read about them, I.... I guess I'm just a bit mad about plants. Anyway, as I said, I draw them. With pencil on paper. I also like to make drawings with colored pencils. You can see some of my work on my website. Here on this blog however, you'll probably see some of the struggles that go with the drawing.

Of course, when you’re mad about plants, and you have a garden like I do, you have to grow them. Here we come to one of my addictions: buying new plants. And it’s not easy for me because there are some exquisite nurseries around here. One of them I visited last weekend. There was a Hosta-fair at De Kleine Plantage in Eenrum. A lot of my plants where bought there. They also have my cards for sale. My mother staid with us that weekend (‘cause Ward turned 11) and naturally she came along. We had a wonderful day. And of course we came home with a lot of new plants. Here are a few of them:
This is Hemerocallis 'American Revolution'

And this beauty is called Sanguisorba 'Chocolate Tipp'

Next in line are two Achillea's 'Credo' (left) and 'Lachsschönheit'

I've planted them all in front of a rose called 'Heritage'. It's an Austin-rose with a wonderful smell. And she looks like this:

I absolutely love the combination of colours. Deep wine red and salmon. The next day we putt them in the ground. I was drooling all over them so there was no need to water them. We did anyway and the same evening it started to rain to. The new darlings loved it! As did the rest of the garden…