And then there were two...

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

I think that pears will be next :)

Update!

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

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

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

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

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

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....