Hydrangeas in four colours
Posted: November 2, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: flowers, hydrangeas, watercolour flowers 22 CommentsBesides watching baseball, this was the weekend to finish up the garden cleanup. I had a list of things that needed to be done — mainly cutting down perennials and shrubs. The biggest of the tasks on my list was to trim the hydrangeas. As I trimmed and discarded the cuttings, I noticed the beautiful, fading colours of each of the different varieties. I set aside one branch from each plant, and when I was done, my reward was to paint them.
You don’t need many colours to paint faded blooms. For these hydrangeas, I chose Carmine and Raw Sienna for the flowers, and Sap Green and Payne’s Grey for the leaves. I love the brownish hues you get when you mix green and red together, so that was my mix for the darks.
This was a great warm-up exercise for my one-day “Plants and Flowers in your Sketchbook” workshop in Hudson, Quebec, coming up this week. This session is full, but I’m holding another one on November 20th and I have a few spots left. If you are interested, drop me a line.
From Alison’s garden
Posted: July 1, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, coloured pencil, flowers, neocolor 12 CommentsHappy Canada Day! I usually choose some red flowers to paint on July 1, but this bouquet from Alison’s garden was just too beautiful to pass up. I can’t name everything that’s in here but it’s exactly the kind of arrangement I love — a little wild looking and different from every angle. Thank you for thinking of me, Alison.
Since I haven’t even unpacked my watercolours yet (lots of garden projects to catch up on at my house), I decided to work in water-soluble pencils. I drew on a sheet of HP paper with a green pencil and then filled in with both coloured pencils and NeoColor sticks from Caran D’Ache. At the end I touched the wet brush to a few areas but mostly it’s just pencil scribbles. And if I have time before the bouquet fades, I may just unpack my palette and try it in watercolour.
A few in blue
Posted: May 9, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chania, Crete, flower pots, flowers, Greece, plein air watercolour, pots, watercolour 19 CommentsIf you read the last issue of my newsletter “The Wheelbarrow“, you’ve probably already seen this little blue wheelbarrow. It’s one that my husband spotted tucked away in a corner of the Botanical Park and Gardens of Crete. It was so perfectly rusty and of course so perfectly blue, that I had to sketch it and add it to my collection of wheelbarrow sketches. A few people asked what blue I used to paint this. It was definitely a Holbein pigment because during this trip I was testing out that brand in my two palettes, but it wasn’t one single colour. I likely used a combination of Turquoise, Horizon Blue and Cerulean Blue, mixed in with a little bit of Burnt Sienna, of course.
I was fascinated by the rows of potted plants that people place outside their doors in the narrow streets of Chania, and of course by the shadow patterns their shapes create. On many occasions I saw these pots, as well as many others, being lovingly tended by their owners. This particular road was not much wider than the width of one car, but I set up my stool against the opposite wall and managed to wedge my easel in there too. Not long after I started to paint, a white van pulled into that narrow space, totally blocking my view and almost knocking over my easel. I was ready to pack up my gear and finish my painting indoors when a woman emerged from a door next to me. I understand a few words of Greek but language was not necessary in this instance. I understood from her gestures that she was telling the driver to move his van so that I could paint. With smiles of appreciation and my best efcharistó to both the driver and the woman, I happily finished my painting and moved on.
Yellow plus grey makes green
Posted: March 6, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, flowers 30 CommentsThis is the Valentine’s Day bouquet that keeps on giving. I received it on February 14th and it’s still beautiful three weeks later. A little shrivelled, I’ll admit, but highly sketchable. The flowers come from a florist — unlike my usual grocery store blooms — which has no doubt contributed to their longevity.
The drooping and curling shapes of this bouquet are still so beautiful. I felt that I couldn’t do them justice with a loose painting. Instead I chose to draw their complex forms on hot press paper using a water-soluble orange marker and then painted with watercolour, using a mix of Payne’s Grey and Lemon Yellow for the fading foliage. I like this mix for grey/greens, and you can get some great darks with it too.
Yesterday’s bouquet, today’s ink
Posted: February 15, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, flowers, ink drawing 25 CommentsLast month, one of my students let me try her Lamy pen that had been filled with De Atramentis Pipe Tobacco brown ink. I couldn’t detect the fragrance of the ink, but I did love the way the ink lines dissolved when you hit them with a little clear water. I tried to find the ink from my local suppliers but no luck. So today I headed downtown to the pen shop and I bought some Diamine Ancient Copper ink. It’s not quite as brown as the tobacco ink, but besides having a beautiful name, it has other qualities that are quite wonderful.
It has a deep orange/pink tone that is perfect for the pale pink amaryllis that are the stars of this bouquet. And what I like about it is that the more you go over the lines with your brush, the more they dissolve until you have lost them altogether. Not all water-soluble inks do that. The final sketch looks like part painting, part ink drawing. Tomorrow I’ll experiment further with this. I’ll draw with copper ink and paint on top of that with watercolour. If the results are decent, I’ll post that drawing too.
Sad little bouquet
Posted: August 25, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, flowers, sketchbook, watercolour sketch 26 CommentsThis started off as a sad big bouquet. Too many uninteresting leaves and too few flowers. Then it flopped and shrivelled and I trimmed it down to a sad little bouquet. But sometimes these arrangements are more fun to sketch. For example, the drooping flowers provide movement, the single red zinnia gives it a focus, and the preponderance of leaves gives it a unity of colour — all importance design elements in a sketch. Despite the sad character of this grouping, I will miss the wildness of summer flowers when autumn rolls around and I have to resort to grocery store bouquets again.
Wilted in the window
Posted: May 20, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: flowers, tulips, watercolour pencils 13 CommentsI love the movement of wilted tulips, and these pink ones on my window sill were particularly nice today. I don’t think they appreciate the warm weather we’re having, and they won’t last long. To capture them, I grabbed a sheet of hot press paper and all the water-soluble pencils I could find in my studio. I used Neocolor II aquarelle sticks, Caran D’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils, and both thick and thin Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils. It’s been a long time since I’ve played with coloured pencils, but it was fun to experiment with some different tools.
I used the pencils in several ways: I drew on dry paper and then wet the pencil lines, I wet the paper and drew into it, and I also dipped the pencils in water and drew with them. I find it hard to blend watercolour pencils, so instead I did a bit of layering when I didn’t have the right colour. I hope to do more playing with materials this summer, and will be sharing it here.
