Blackcap nest

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

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...

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

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

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.
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Spring is coming!

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

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