Arum italicum - finished

So, as promised, here's the finished Arum italicum in coloured pencil. Always a bit of a challenge to scan the reds but this time my scanner did fairly well. I'll send it soon to my friend in England. Hope it will bring a smile to her face :)

Arum italicum - WIP

One of my dear friends had an accident some time ago and still is in a bad shape. She feels depressed about it all. She lives in England so I can't go and visit her or help her out but I decided to make her a drawing. Something to look at and to know people think about her and care. My drawings are all a small part of me and giving it to someone is the most personal gift possible. I think all artists will agree with me on that.

I have now lots of seedheads of Arum italicum in my garden. They start with green, shiny berries which start (at the top) to turn into bright orange ones. From a distance they look like orange gnome hats in the shadow under the trees. The common name of this plant is Lords-and-Ladies. A really wonderful name, like so many other English plant names.
They make me happy. I really don't like orange flowers and am not crazy about orange berries either but somehow these bright drumsticks make me smile. Perhaps it is that gnome-thing or maybe it's the memory of the sweet Flower Fairies paintings by Cicely M. Barker.

They just have something magical about them. So I picked a few from the garden and started to draw. It's not finished yet. I'm currently working on another big project as well so this takes a bit longer. My son told me I should do it in coloured pencil because it has been too long since I did a coloured pencil drawing. Who am I to disobey. Here's what I did so far. I'll post the finished one soon.

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How Dutch can it get

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 ;)