April Workshop

The Sarracenias and Me at the SBA exhibition. Thanks to Shevaun  for the photo.

Had a great workshop on Sunday at Denmark Farm Conservation Centre. There weren't many of us but the students that attended had been to previous workshops and I noticed a great improvement in the work. We studied spring flowers; bluebells, violets, tulips and quails eggs and practised wet in wet and dry brush techniques. I remembered to take photos this time around and a few of Denmark Farm too. It's a beautiful place and there's plenty going on there including accommodation and camping, a 40 acre nature trail and also venue hire. They have a range of courses like conservation training, species ID and all sorts of natural crafts. I went on a moth day course there a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Great workshop venue

Tutor selfie!!

Tulips are good to study for wet into wet and sweeping dry brush techniques

Really great work from the students

Perfect sheen

Denmark Farm in the April sunshine

Beautiful place 

Some of the accommodation with an amazing sedum roof

The next workshop will be held on Sunday the 19th of July and we will study the forms and textures of fruit.

SBA Exhibition

The SBA (Society of Botanical Artists) exhibition was as good as ever, and I thought that the paintings were laid out even better than previous years. It is still on at the moment in Westminster central hall and finishes on Sunday.

This year I was stewarding and also doing a demonstration there. I also sold a painting of the Sarracenias so I am pleased.

My great friend Sarah of The Natural Year took some video of me demoing to post here, so my thanks to Sarah for this. It was my first time demonstrating there and hopefully I didn't shake too much!!

I have a workshop on Sunday too at Denmark Farm so I shall be working on a similar theme of spring flowers. 

Happy painting everyone.

The Birch Tree

The birch is a stunning tree, one of my favourites and really good to paint or draw. The older trees are cracked and gnarled with bright green moss cascading from the bumps.The bracket mushroom that I made the paper from lives upon the birch tree too and while I was out hunting them I found a beautiful tree as a subject to paint. It made for some great photos looking up towards the sky

The first painting drawn with pen

I worked very quickly on the above painting using pen and watercolour. But I didn't like the shape of the trunk, it didn't have the sinuous-ness that I liked in the tree. So I decided to do it again, just in watercolours this time. I used masking fluid to mask out the edge of the trunk so I could work on a quick wet into wet background. I use the Masquepen type pictured below and quite like it. Also I used some of the Daniel Smith Primatek paints which I love for unstrict botanical work like this or landscapes.

You can see my horse chestnut buds emerging (still working on them too!)

Here are the 2 together

This second painting below took 5 days, much longer then the first one. I used a touch of gouache to get back the highlights on the moss which was especially difficult and I think this subject would be great for oils, maybe.

I think I'll be keeping a look out for more interesting trees and maybe invest in some oil paints as I've never used them. That would be a new challenge.

Here's a little woodland sculpture we made in the woods today! 

Happy holidays.