I have been continuing to try different methods of artwork to illustrate the series of riparian booklets I am producing and co-authoring with Sylvia M Haslam.

Sylvia and I have worked together for many years. I designed a logo specifically for some of her work: “River Friend – To Discover • To Assess • To Conserve • To Save” – a simple but very important message to everyone who is interested in river ecology and its conservation and management. This is the logo, which you may have seen on some publications such as

S.M. Haslam (1997) The River Scene, Ecology and Cultural Heritage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 0 521 57410 2 Hardback.
S.M. Haslam (2004) River Kbir: the hidden wonder. Typeset and present press-ready files onto CD (for printing in Malta). ISBN 99932-0-295-9
S.M. Haslam (2004): Wied Garnaw in Santa Lucija. A Field Study Guide. Santa Lucija Local Council, Malta. 38pp. ISBN 99932-0-339-4
S.M. Haslam (2002): Our Nature, our Heritage. A Field Study Guide. Ministry of Agriculture, Malta. 52 pp. ISBN 99932-0-204-5
S.M. Haslam (2001): Wied il–Lunziata. A Field Study Guide. Ministry for Gozo, Malta. ISBN 99932-0-086-7
S.M. Haslam (1998): Chadwick Lakes. A Field Study Guide. International Tree Foundation, Malta. 50 pp.
S.M. Haslam, (1991) The Historic River  Cobden of Cambridge Press

The latest set of artwork is draft pen and ink drawings from photographs taken by Sylvia which illustrate particular things to do with river landscapes. These sketches are specifically for the booklet about the River Brue  for which I have already done a few water colour/pen and ink paintings as well as some schematic diagrams drawn by computer (see these below the pen and ink drawings).

Here are the [draft] drawings and schematic diagrams for the booklet about the River Brue in Somerset:

 

 

Here is the artworkSaveSave

With the lovely sunshine of the last two days, it has made possible quite a bit of painting. Bearing in mind how many hours it takes me to paint a picture, I have made (what I think to be) good progress on the Bird Garden Illumination painting since my last post. I do really need to finish it by the end of this weekend because I now have to turn my hand to the pen & ink drawings for the booklet about the River Brue in Somerset. So apart from playing tennis tonight and tomorrow morning, the rest of the weekend is free for painting – although the light on Sunday looks as if it will be quite dismal! Will keep you posted…

You will see that I have painted in the baby swallows, and many thanks to Alison Grey for the resource photograph (one of many that she has very kindly supplied for my use); and notice the snail shell in amongst the nest gubbins. I did not notice this until I actually started to paint the nest. Upon closer inspection it also contains little stones and sticks – very clever what birds can do with a bit of mud and spit!

Here is the artworkSaveSave

Following on from my previous diary entry (link below), I have been utilizing the skills gained by my little Beatrix Potter exercise to produce a few draft drawings and paintings for the series of riparian booklets I am producing with Sylvia M Haslam. We have been researching for the booklets since 2010, and now at last we are almost in a position to publish (provided we can find a publisher of course), subject to my tidying up the text and producing the artworks. It is a real honour to work with Sylvia and I hope I can do justice to the project. I have done three little painting drafts regarding Fish Houses which used to be built to house live fish which had been caught, to keep them fresh until needed for food, as well as a few schematic diagrams drawn on computer with my old Adobe Illustrator programme and a mouse. I have not yet tried the pen and ink drawings which will form the main part of the illustration set, so I will have to produce a few in that media, just to see how I get on and to establish a style which is acceptable for publishing and which suits the booklets.

Here are the [draft] drawings and schematic diagrams for a booklet about the River Brue in Somerset:

It has been a splendid fortnight for creativity. I also completed a little graphite drawing for someone—a black labrador named “Tara”, whom I went to meet with my camera and took lots of snaps and paid attention to her character. I hope you like it (she is 10 years old, but very sprightly):

I have also been working the last few days on a painting I started in 2016 (I have several pictures drawn out during that year which I never managed to get to paint, so I have decided to make a real effort and complete them if I can. There are about 9 altogether, including a set of squirrel paintings to be done in oil on stretched canvas – black, red, grey and albino/white. I recall it was very interesting to obtain resource material for these. I was fortunate that the black and grey squirrels visited my little garden and the compositions reflect this; the reds resources resulted in a trip with hubby and caravan up to the lake district where the owners of the caravan site on which we stayed have special squirrel feeders which entices the animals down from the trees and gives the “campers” a very good show to watch. The albino was another story, and I am grateful to two of my voyaging friends who captured a few shots of a white squirrel down in Kent somewhere. I have never seen a white squirrel in Cambridgeshire. The current picture I am working on is entitled “Bird Garden”, an illumination with metallic gold letters and filigree. Today I completed the parrot on the right hand side. I will post updates when I can.

And last but not least, I may have mentioned that I play darts with a local team of ladies. We always finish last in the league and have a fabulous wooden spoon trophy with our name on it. But that does not dent our enthusiasm for the game and we always have a lovely time playing, getting beaten, and then having a fabulous pub “nosh-up” afterwards. I do have a dartboard up in my office and I practice whenever I can (not that it does me any good, but it keeps me moving about when I sit down for a long time at the computer or painting). I could not believe that in October 2017 I actually achieved a 180 – which if one achieves that during a match your name goes into the “Hall of Fame” on Facebook! But of course there was no one here to witness it, so for posterity I took a photograph, and this is it (I promise)! Howzat!

 

Here is the artworkSaveSave

You may be aware that I am in the process of producing the artwork for a series of riparian booklets with my co-author,  Sylvia Haslam. For some time I have been wondering how I would like to produce the illustrations and suddenly thought about the work of Beatrix Potter, whom I believe was a great artist in her field of simple but effective illustrations. BP’s natural history pieces and her realm of fantasy animal characters show just how skilled she was. They say that all artists can improve their skills by copying the “Masters” – and I place BP in this category”. I decided to delve into her work in detail, finding out as much as I could about how she painted. I discovered that she only used 6 colours, which I managed to purchase, namely: Antwerp Blue, Crimson Lake, Gamboge Yellow, Sap Green and Burnt Sienna, as well as a bit of White if she made a mistake!

The worst part of this exercise for me personally is that I love to use  white (Titanium mostly) rather than leave white space on the paper, and I must confess that I did use a bit here and there for emphasis, but mostly I was pleased that I managed to be good and leave the white space.

Although I tried to find out if BP painted first and inked in afterwards, I was unable to obtain the information. I went with my gut feeling and inked in over the paint. I liked the effect! This has been a truly remarkable learning curve and wonderful exercise in the art of water colouring.

This is the artwork which I produced; I do hope you like it.

Picture Exercise Profile Link

I had been asked by ABBA to send a little study case about the preparation and painting of my Stinking Iris picture for their website. However, as mentioned in my previous post, I sent them the wrong image for the selection process (very strict rules), so the picture did not make it at all! But I do like the finished artwork – much more than I do the bluebells (1703 ABBA Website story), which did go through the selection process but which was not good enough at the end of the day to be included in the final round – and thought I would let all my readers see the post I sent which of course was not then published. I hope you enjoy the picture’s creation journey.

“Stinking Iris” (Iris foetidissima)
Water colour completed 15th October 2017, Artist Code: 1704
Painted on Aquarelle Arches hot pressed 140lb 100% cotton rag paper, size: 14″ x 20″.

I started this project in June 2017 (during the middle of painting my other submission, the English Bluebell which I took on at the request of ABBA because the original artist could not complete the project) when the Iris flowers suddenly bloomed earlier than expected. There was no need for a field trip to find a specimen as they grow in my little wild back garden. There are only two kinds of native English Iris, and this one likes shady, damp spots. It is a very vigorous plant in the right conditions and thrives in our green and pleasant land. Its name “Stinking Iris” comes from the putrid smell of bad raw meat which is emitted when the leaves are crushed. It also has a few other local names. (The other native Iris, which thrives by waters edge, is the Yellow Iris, Iris pseudacorus.) The first photograph shows my preliminary notes and colour mixes. I mixed a lot of the green which came in very handy when I had to complete the painting in October, four months later.

Here are a few photographs of the live material available to me, and which I used to compose the artwork. There are plant close-ups, as well as pictures of my desk and live specimens, and one picture shows the store of flowers in the fridge—which helps to keep them fresh for many days.

My preliminary drawings took many turns, and after a lot of trials and tribulations I settled upon a suitable study which showed all the things I wished to portray, in what I think is a nice composition. The first photo shows a few elements on tracing paper; the second these and other elements cut up and arranged on my water colour paper; and the third the final [enhanced] traced composition on the paper.

Next I decided to paint first the flowers and buds whilst the specimens were still fresh. In reality, the flowers only last a couple of days before they start to curl up and fragment to decay, whilst beginning to form the seed pods. I put the painting away after working on it for nearly a month because I needed to wait for the seed pods to appear, ripen and split to reveal the beautiful bright orange seeds which line the broken capsule. The plant holds on to these during the winter.

Unfortunately (and this does sometimes happen), the source from where I had hoped to get my mature seed pods did not materialize as the gardener removed all the seed heads before they matured so that my friend’s garden would not become overrun with the plant. I had used up all my flowers to draw and paint the first phase of the picture so had no seed heads in my own little garden. Fortunately, I did a project about the plants in my local Watts Wood a few years ago and recalled that there were some Stinking Iris plants just inside the entrance to the wood. Upon walking to the wood with my bag and scissors I was grateful that the original plants had spread and that there were quite a few seed heads so I cut a couple for my use. I shall sprinkle the seeds in my garden under some trees in the hope of getting more to grow in future.

In Early October with seed pods burst and all a-splendour, this is where the green I mentioned above came in very handy. I always mix too much colour for paintings when great coverage is required and I had mixed in June enough of the “body” green for this painting. I stored the surplus colour in a tiny preserve jar in a dark drawer ready for coming out for completion of the picture. As you can see, the green remains in the leaves of the seed-head stems, although it is starting to decay with yellow and brown patches. But as I was completing the picture, and before I started the lovely orange seeds I felt that I should put in another leaf to the left side of the root block of leaves. Even though the tuber and its leaves I had chosen to portray were fairly upright and tight, the leaves of the Iris characteristically fan out gently; so this extra leaf is an indicator of that fanning—albeit very subtle!

The final photographs show the stage-painting of the seeds as well as a few close-ups of some of the elements. The large flower head bottom right, and the large stalk and bud above it, together with the seed-head stem, have scale bars as these were drawn slightly larger than life to give a clearer view. (You have probably noticed that some of the photographs are a bit “wonky”! This is because the camera lens distorts the straight edges. I am not able to stop this with my limited knowledge of taking pictures. (You can read the The English Bluebell entry blog on the ABBA website here. The Bluebell picture was also included in the header pictures on the ABBA website until my painting was not selected—this is what it looked like VIEW.

And this is the finished painting:

AndAnd AndSaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave