Runner Beans

Runner bean flowers

Hi there, how are you?

This week I have spent some time relaxing and drawing in the garden (like there’s any where else to go at the moment hehehe)

In the spring I planted runner beans and lettuce, (all were eaten by the slugs *sniff*) so I took a few pots and planted beans on the kitchen window.

My runner bean flowers has been eaten! this one was drawn as the first beans had started growing. they didn’t last much longer.

Due to the current pandemic all lettuce seeds were sold out, we’ll have to eat shop bought lettuce like every one else. *sad face*

I planted the new seedlings out in a large pot with stick to tie them into as they grew and every night I went out with a torch to pick off the raging hordes of molluscs and threw them over the fence. (no not the neighbours hehehe, the patch of trees at the end of the street.)

Some watercolour runner bean flowers and a little gouache.

They’re dwarf runner beans so they don’t grow too high but the beans are normal size.

There were lots of flowers pretty quickly and I had high hopes of eating some early beans. Alas all of the flowers pinged off.

They did keep producing flowers though and now finally we have beans!

Runner beans, whoot! drawn with a fountain pen with coloured pencils.

Lots of tiny runner beans and one or two that look like they need picking and eating, (soon my pretties).

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Feeling Blue (Lots of blue patterns)

Dotty flowers

Hi there, how are you?

This was the last and final week of the Victoria Johnson class – explore florals and we’re working in blue.

I played a little with masking fluid; mine is pretty old and gloopy so I ended up with lots of dots using the back end of a paint brush.

Next I tried some simple brush strokes it’s uneven and wonky which I like. I made two colour ways for this pattern. The cool thing about this is only the background was changed but it made the coloured brush marks look completely different.

Brush stroke petals

Some loose chrysanthemum flowers in this next pattern, painted in watercolour with simple brush strokes it was a strange flower to make a pattern out of but I think it works.

Chrysanthemum flowers

The last set of flowers were something I had drawn in the garden with a fountain pen containing blue ink. I hadn’t intended to make anything out of them but since I was in pattern making mode I thought it would be fun to have a go.

Delicate garden flowers

It’s been an interesting three weeks, I’ve used art techniques and materials I probably wouldn’t have other wise so altogether a very good learning experience.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Gouache Flowers

Pink hibiscus flowers

Hi there, how are you?

It’s been a week phew!

Last week I was supposed to be drawing tropical flowers for Victoria Johnson, explore florals, I like tropical flowers so no problem eh?

I drew and painted loads and loads of flowers and leaves, looked at it all and decided I didn’t like any of it. Then started again.

Gouache had been suggested in the class notes so I broke out the gouache and painted some hibiscus flowers.

After my little melt down I sat outside in the garden for a while drawing flowers. There is a nasturtium growing in a pot by the door, grown from a seed off last years flowers and made a quick drawing with some watercolour brush pens. These pens work well on this sketchbook paper, the colours aren’t brilliant but it was just nice to sit in the sunshine for a while.

Huge surprise I didn’t make mud! (I usually feel like I’m painting with mud) I tried making some highlights and shadows to give the flowers a little dimension, they don’t look too bad.

Nasturtium sketch

Back to the class work, I painted a monstera leaf and needed something else to fill it out a bit. Nasturtiums are tropical right? Lucky I had a nice drawing in my sketch book hehehe. I re-drew the nasturtium and painted it in gouache too.

Hibiscus-flower in cream & navy

They were all cut out in the computer and put together into a little poseyish thing. The blending modes are a quick way to change the colours up. Next to make some patterns.

Stripey pattern

Same pattern two colour ways

I think I like them, I’m not sure but I learned stuff and completed the week, even if it was a little late.

Hoping for something easier next week.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Folk Art Flowers

Red folk art flower mandala

Hi there, how are you?

This week I have been taking a class with Victoria Johnson called explore florals. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I love drawing flowers and I thought this class would be a way to look at them from a different perspective and even be a bit more experimental with my drawing.

I took the create collections last October and learned a huge amount so I’m going to see where this takes me.

Week 1: folk art. I’ve always liked folk art but never gotten around to doing any. I spent a day researching then made lots of terrible sketches, cos apparently that’s my thing.

There are so many styles to choose from, colour variations, from all parts of the world!

I decided the monochrome designs were speaking to me the loudest.

I didn’t know where to start so I made lots of shapes in illustrator and pushed them around till something worked.

The mandala above started taking shape. I may have gotten carried away with the decoration a little. I blew the image up a little to show the details.

Red folk art flower mandala detail

The little flower below is the same style, I like the simplicity of the design in this one.

Red folk art flowers

I wanted to make a pattern so I switched the shapes around to make similar but different flowers so the pattern would match, one of the good things about illustrator is you can change anything even the colour in just a few clicks.

Red folk art patern

This took most of the week then I had the bright idea to do something more traditional (really!)

these are painted in gouache, not my favourite medium but it needed to be opaque and solid. I used blue this time. I painted just a few sprays and flowers, scanned them in and made them into a little pattern.

Blue folk inspired flowers

I played with the blending modes a bit and found three more colour ways that I liked.

Note to self I think the orangy yellow flowers would look awesome in gold leaf.

1 pattern 4 colour ways

Now my head is buzzing with folk art ….

Next week another exercise, more fun with flowers. Whoot!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Humming Birds And Fuchsia Watercolours

hummingbird and fuchsia with a background

Hello peeps how are you!

After all these weeks of drawing and painting fuchsia with hummingbirds I have finally made some little watercolour paintings (phew).

I’ve painted humming birds before but they always look clunky and they seem like such delicate little birds so I’ve tried not to be too heavy handed and lighten them up a little.

Usually I just fill up my sketch book but I wanted something a bit more finished this time to give as a gift.

They look a little better in person, the scanner always seems to wash the colours out.

In the painting above I over worked the flower (got caught up in the details). I couldn’t decide whether to paint a background or not so I tested it out on this painting (you never know till you try); maybe the bird could have been a bit darker to work though.

Next are some tester flowers to check colours and practice shading, they turned out pretty well I think.

Fuchsia watercolour sketch

This is the same bird as the top image I just flipped the drawing over to transfer it onto the paper; I couldn’t decide what colour to use so I think this is a mixture of several birds.

The flowers are a bit pale but on the whole not a bad effort.

Hummingbird and fuchsias

This is the one I like most, the colours and composition work so this is the one I’ll use.

Green hummingbird and fuchsia flowers

I may have taken some artistic licence with these birds, I’ve never see a real hummingbird, only photos. I know they’re pretty small but how small compared to a fuchsia flower I’ve no idea, hopefully its not too far off.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Humming Birds And Fuchsia Flowers

Fuchsia brush pen doodles

Hi there, how are you?

This week I’ve been looking at the fuchsias a little more closely, its interesting (to me at least)that every flower is not identical. Most have four petals on the “skirt” but one or two have five or have some tiny half petals. I am also enjoying the way they curl and furl around each other. It’s surprising what you see when you slow right down and take notice.

I spent a couple of days drawing the shapes with a brush pen on yea olde printer paper, you know the kind that used to have little holes down each side hehehe. (We used to have boxes of the stuff for the kids to draw on when were tiny; I found a small box when I was tidying out a cupboard, seems a shame to waste it.)

It’s actually really lovely to draw on with a brush pen because its so smooth, the bristles glide along the surface, so much fun.

They were just supposed to be little black and white studies but I was bored watching TV and started colouring them in with watercolour.

They’re a bit cartoony but I like the way they turned out, surprisingly I managed to get some nice shading on the petals.

I found a scrap of watercolour paper left over from the peregrine falcon card I’d made for fathers day. I had intended to use it for colour tests but then I drew lots of flowers and painted them, as you do?

It was cut from an A4 piece of paper and is roughly three inches wide and twelve inches long.

The youngling said it looked like a giant book mark, I think I’m gonna need bigger book hehehe.

Long watercolour fuchsia

The next two images are on the back of the flowers above. If I’d posted it at the original width they would look very tiny, like I was painting beetles again. I digitally cut it in half so you could see better.

They are more colour tests, this time for humming birds.

Hummingbird colour tests 1+2

Hummingbird colour tests 3+4

I think I need to do a few more because although there are some parts that work most of it don’t. (Where did that orange come from??) Lots more practising to do.

Hopefully I’ll have a nice little painting at the end of all this but the fun is in the process rather than the end result.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Fuchsia Flowers, Not As Tasty As You Think

Fuchsia sketch (watercolour and gouache)

Hi there, how are you?

A month or so back I bought two little fuchsia plants from the supermarket, (it’s the only outing we have at the moment besides a walk.) They were very small pots about the size of a plastic drinking cup.

One plant is a trailing variety (I’ll need to find a way to raise it up somehow to keep the flowers off the ground) the other says its hardy, we’ll see if that’s true in time.

I potted them into bigger pots to give them room to grow, they are now are much bigger and producing lots of lovely flowers.

The big news is that slugs and snails are not eating them, whoot! They’ve been in the garden over a month and not so much as a nibble.

The weather has been rubbish, baking hot sun that left us melting into little puddles and rain with a side of thunder storms.

Watercolour fuchsia sketch

Ive nipped outside when I could to quickly sketch my new flowers.

These are a bit scrappy, mainly studies to get used to the shapes and give a general idea of the colours.

I was using watercolour with a spot of gouache, fighting away with it then I found a brush pen in the pencil case, I had forgotten how much fun using this pen was.

Fuchsia sketch with brush pen

After scanning them into the computer I thought some of the flowers might make a fun pattern so I cleaned them up and made a doodly fuchsia pattern.

Doodly fuchsia pattern

This is a sketch of something I’m working on. The idea is to work out the fuchsia flowers then break out the watercolour paper and paint them with maybe this little guy.

Hummingbird brush pens sketch

Its a work in progress at the moment, in my head it looks pretty good, we’ll see if reality matches the idea though hehehe.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Roses

Watercolour rose sketches

Hi there, how are you?

The other half bought me a small bunch of roses last week (with no prompting or putting them in the trolly myself) I tried drawing them.

I don’t know why roses are so difficult to draw, for some reason I have a huge mental block when I try.

I’ve been staring and squinting at them trying to work out the shadows and going cross-eyed looking at the many petals.

I drew them out with a pencil then coloured in the shadows with watercolour using the colour of the paper as the highlight. The paper is blue but it kind of works.

The purple rose looks quite dreamy on this paper, I like the effect.

It’s probably the best I’m going to do this time as they’re starting to droop.

Blue rose sketch

This is a peregrine falcon, I painted him and placed him on a little card for Fathers day this weekend.

We each made him a card, it’s fun to see the different little artworks on the mantelpiece.

peregrine falcon

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x