Staycation: Sunny Garden Drawings

A loose watercolour pink rose

Hi there, how are you?

This would have been our holiday week but the way things are right now we just had a few days out and have spent the rest of the time sitting in the garden drawing, so staycation for us this year.

Luckily the weather is lovely and instead of pulling out weeds I am drawing in my little book. The weeds can wait till next week hehehe.

There is a rose at the back of the garden that fancies itself a climber, I don’t have the heart to tell it otherwise so I let it push up through the ivy about 6 foot in the air and it flowers away happily.

I managed not to overwork this rose (above) for a change. Normally I get hung up on the details but this time I put down a wash then put in some shadows and stopped. It made it look a lot fresher. Must try to do this more often.

A few years ago I picked a small piece of iris up from the pavement, someone had been weeding and left a few bits lying on the path; back at home I poked the tiny plants into the garden and left them. Two years later we saw our first flowers.

They have beautiful mauve, yellow and red petals, so unusual and there were several flowers on the stalk each blooming as the previous one wilted.

I drew one with a sepia fine liner which was very meditative and calming. then painted it with watercolour to try and document the colours.

I hope they come back again next year.

Iris drawn with sepia fine liner

A watercolour sketch of an iris

Poppies are still popping up in the pots. This one was a very interesting shape to draw. The wind had knocked some of the poppies over, this one was a fighter and it started to push it’s way back up towards the sun.

watercolour sketch of fallen poppies