Pippa !!!

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

Anemone hupehuensis 'Splendens'

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

Eenrum

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

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

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

Lime

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

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

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Common Lime/Tilia europaea/Hollandse Linde

Plums

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

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

shades

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

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

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

self-portrait

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

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

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

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