Tomorrow morning I will be having another botanical art workshop. The subject is roses.
People often think it is very difficult to paint beautiful roses, but think about how the petals are attached in the flower head. Use that knowledge to create a proper line drawing and tonal drawing, then add the colour.
I am glad to say that as the weather has been a little cooler the last few days – and cloudy, there are still quite a few roses of differing levels of difficulty ready to be plucked to have their portraits drawn. It will be interesting to see which roses the students will choose. Watch this space to see the progression of some of the work.
Today I have spent most of the day on work in relation to the SBA exhibition in Palmengarten, Frankfurt in October. There is a lot of preparation in organising the collection and exhibiting of work from across the whole of the UK, Ireland, USA, New Zealand, France, Germany and Japan at Palmengarten. But it will be a fantastic exhibition with so many SBA members taking part.
I had hoped, to finish the Irises painting in coloured pencil yesterday, but think I have completed it today. I don’t feel the colours come out so well from a photograph, but will be better and easier to show online once I get time to match them on Photoshop.
Today we had fantastic weather and loads of visitors. For me there continued to be a constant stream of botanical art interested people. So many to explain to about botanical art and illustration.
I wrote this on Sunday and then fell asleep! It was an interesting and rewarding three days which might even have benefits in relation to future work. I also managed to get a little done on the Irises picture in coloured pencil.
This week has been catching up on paperwork, gardening and more painting as I couldn’t bend any more. But now at least we can see the flowers for the weeds and overgrown Forget-me- nots.
Next week I have a three-day workshop called ‘How difficult can Roses be?’. The roses in the garden are now in full bloom smelling beautifully and ready to be painted. Luckily we have all sorts which will allow people of varying abilities and experience to get a good result.
But it is now only two weeks until my husband and I travel to Norway in preparation for the workshop there.
We knew that today(well yesterday now), the weather had been forecast as very bad – although the forecast was changeable. We knew that during the night there might be downpours and several times during the day.
We woke up to a wet nose wanting food ( one of the cats). We noticed it was wet outside, but nothing undue. We were about to leave the house to get to Stansted House when the heavens opened and it poured.
Keep calm and collected as there is nothing that can be done about nature other than dress for the occasion. I donned a sweater, long raincoat and long wellies – as well as my jeans of course. We got to Stansted just as the rain was stopping ( about 1/2 hr after we left.home). We were greeted by a man singing wishful and happy, sunny songs.
By 11:00 the sun was breaking through and the sky rapidly became blue with the odd puffy white cloud. That was the weather state for the rest of the day. Beautiful!
We had a lot of very interested visitors to the stand and discussions ranged from the type of coloured pencil I was using, to the potential for taking part in a new project. Some exciting conversations!
A picture taken during today:
One more day to go. Do come and enjoy the atmosphere.
You are all invited to come to Stansted Park Garden Show. This a yearly show situated near Chichester. For those who love their gardens, this is the place.
I have a stand in the Art and Design Marquee – and I’m terrified! Not that there is anything to be terrified about.
I believe that I am the only botanical artist there although there will be a plenty of general art and design. But there will be plants and lots of them.
Summer still does not seem to have reached us yet. Chilly and cloudy with the occasional sun burst. But I am told from several sources in Norway that they have summer proper! I can’t wait for the workshop there in four weeks time.
In the meantime, I have again spent most of the day on the organisation, information, form design etc. for the SBA exhibition at Palmengarten. I think that so far I must have spent a week solid on this. The emails come in fast and furious following sending out an email to all members asking if they intend to submit. The response so far has been really good and today I got the instructions and forms finished off and sent to those thinking about exhibiting.
I managed to start painting at 17:00. Not much of the day left. My husband had got some more Irises for me to work on the Coloured pencil picture, so I did a little on that. By the way, I intend to work on the irises in coloured pencil and the Mandeville in watercolour, at the Stansted show. But it will be different days spent on each. I haven’t decided which days yet.
This is how far I have got with the Irises. I’m afraid the lighting was not very good for the photo, but it’s better than nothing.
Tomorrow will be the last weekly botanical art class until September. After which I will be packing things together to take to Stansted for setting up on Thursday.
The last day of this workshop was today. The sun shone for most of the say and obviously affected positively everyone in the room.
The workshop went well. The students seemed to be satisfied with both some of the things they had learnt, as well as what they achieved. To top it all we had a lot of fun. There seemed to be longish periods of almost silence, interspersed with hilarity.
A good workshop from the point of view of the tutor (me), but in the end everything depends on what the students got out of it.
Have a look at some of the results.
The next workshop is Tuesday 17th until Thursday 19th June and is all about beautiful roses. How difficult can they be? Not so difficult once you are given tips in what to look for in your subject; and how to translate this onto your paper. Do get in touch if you can join me.
But tomorrow I will be demonstrating at the Oxmarket Art Centre, for the Society of Floral Painters (SFP). This time I will be demonstrating watercolour.
Over the last three days whilst discussing composition and drawing, I started off my composition as an example for the students today and for the demo tomorrow. My next picture has taken three evenings to draw. It is a Mandeville plant. It is quite a complex composition because of the growing habit of the plant – which needs to be shown.
My students from the last few days all wanted to come back to Chichester to see the demo, but unfortunately live too far away to be able to drop in. I promised that I would use the blog to show them how the picture develops.
These are the the first two photos, but I am not sure whether you will see clearly enough the drawing in the first one. The second shot is the tonal under painting of a dying flower.
Hopefully one of the many buds will open tomorrow so that I can do one of the spectacular flowers.
Come and see the demo at the Oxmarket, Chichester 11:00 – 16:30.
Yesterday (Thursday) was the first of a three-day workshop. Most of the day was spent on composition and drawing. Whilst the weather was OK we used the time to choose flowers from the garden to paint. We were only going to concentrate on floating flower heads.
As many will know, the colours in the garden do no clash. You can put all sorts together and it still looks beautiful. Nature is a wonderful thing. Therefore putting together colours that are not normally considered to be conducive with each other really works well. Hopefully you will see some of the results.
Normally just the morning is spent composing and drawing ready to commence painting. However, the students this time became very involved in the technicalities of composition and they realised that their final painting will only be as good as there drawing. There compositions were finished by the end of the first day and they were ready to start day two.
At the start of today, the students had some good drawings to start painting and carefully they began to lay in colour. After a lot of concentration and hard work, they made some headway by the end of the day – but whether or not they will finish their compositions by the end of tomorrow is anyone’s guess. We shall see.
Anyway, a good time has been had by all so far – including me. They are a fun, hard working bunch of people.
Following my botanical art demonstration at Westminster Central Hall during the SBA exhibition, I have hardly done any painting until today.
We had a few days good weather last week, so I did some much needed weeding in the garden. My husband and I also sorted what vegetables were to go into our new raised beds in the kitchen garden (he did the work). And I spent one day colour matching on Photoshop two pictures that I have just had framed. One is of Hellebore heads and the other was the large Hydrangea head in black and white.
I also had to mount some prints in preparation for the Society of Floral Painters (SFP) exhibition in Chichester handing in was on Monday and I was on one of the two assessment teams.
The arrangement of teams was quite impressive. The SFP is Floral and not necessarily botanical. I am strictly botanical, and as a counter balance, one artists paints very loosely and the third member is in between. In this way we got quite a good selection of paintings.
Once all the pictures had gone through the selection process, we were again divided into teams to hang the pictures. My husband had been a runner during the morning session and was also now hanging the pictures. In the end the SFP committee thought they would to adopt him!
Hanging the pictures lasted two days with the opening on Tuesday evening. Do go and visit the Oxmarket Art Centre in Chichester. It is a good exhibition and there is something there to suit all artistic tastes, as long as it is in relation to the kingdom of plants.
I am demonstrating coloured pencil and botanical art this first Sunday between 11:00 and 16:30. Do come and watch and ask questions if there is something you would like to know. I will be demonstrating again the following Sunday 1 June, but this time watercolour. Other artists will be demonstrating other techniques whilst the exhibition is on. Have a look at my website http://www.gaynorsflora.com/page12.htm for the address, dates and times of the exhibition.
On Wednesday my husband and I drove up to London to collect pictures following the SBA exhibition at Westminster and to attend the AGM meeting. One of the topics was the exhibition that the SBA are providing pictures for at Palmengarten, Frankfurt in October. We are both heavily involved with collecting the pictures from across the UK and getting them to Frankfurt. But more about that at a later stage. But we managed to start the collection of paintings during the AGM. We are off to a good start.
Today was my usual weekly class and since then I have been painting.
Do you remember the Irises that I did in watercolour and then demonstrated in coloured pencil at Westminster? I have continued with that today and will be using the same to demonstrate on Sunday. I think I have been doing myself a disservice in trying to keep it true to the watercolour as it is quite different to the iris I am now painting from. I’m tying myself up in knots.
This is it so far. The completed watercolour one first followed by the very incomplete coloured pencil one.
The Chichester Art Trail happens every May and generally includes Bank holiday Monday in the first weekend. That is what has happened this year too and we are again open to the public.
Essentially the criteria for this art trail is that you open your studio to the public so that everyone can see you at work. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. And, in fact I am told that very few people are actually working at their art. Therefore , it seems that people are very pleased when they arrive at our ‘venue’ (sounds a pretentious word doesn’t it?). That’s why I call the shed the shed – because it is and was a shed. Actually, it was a loose box, so a shed is an upgrade. But as ever I am off on a tangent.
We have had a steady trickle of people since Friday evening. We, and the other artists in Bosham, had a Pimms preview evening for people who live in Bosham. It was quite tough getting everything ready in time, but it was fun once we got there. The people of Bosham did as requested and either turned up on their bikes or ‘Shank’s pony’. For those who are not English, this means ones own two legs.
The first day – Saturday- went well enough once everyone had got their weekend shopping out of the way. The weather has been absolutely supper. The sun has been shining and it is very pleasant. This means I have been able to sit working in the shed with the door open ready for visitors. Yesterday went very well. In fact the first Sunday is usually the best day of the two weekends. With any luck, in writing this the statement will prove me wrong.
In Bosham there are 15 artists in 11 locations – which tells you that those who share are not able to show their own working environment. As one can’t go any further than the sea when getting to see us (we are about 200 metres from the inlet), we are the last one on the Bosham part of the trail. This means that many drop off the trail before getting to us as there is so much of interest on the way – that is unless they have specifically chosen our place. However, we still get a few who want to see as many artists as they can and that gives me a real opportunity to get people interested in botanical art.
Our set-up is that we have a gallery of my pictures in the conservatory (where I normally have workshops). My husband mans this area as he loves talking to the people that come. I am working in the shed so that people can see what I do and ask as many questions as they want to. Mulling over the questions I have had, perhaps I have chosen the wrong medium that I am using in the shed. I chose to do some purple irises in watercolour as I haven’t used that medium in a whole painting for some time.
The conservatory (Gallery for the day)contains the RHS Silver Gilt medal Crab apple series, which is in coloured pencil and attracts a lot of attention, but also some of the Magnolia x soulangeana series in watercolour that I did as an RHS exhibit in 2011. Visitors are astounded when my husband tells them that the crab apple series is in coloured pencil and therefore they are asking about the coloured pencils all the time. There seems to be less of a thrill about watercolour, although a fair amount of interest as to how I achieved the iridescent purple of the Irises.
Visitors do love to see the artists working environment and ask questions about how they do things. That is why it is a shame to hear that very few make themselves available to do this.
Before I finish this blog, there are two things I must mention. The open studios art trail is open next Saturday and Sunday between 10:30 and 17:30. You can find my address on my website: http://www.gaynorsflora.com . Additionally, I have places on my next workshop ‘A page of flower heads from the garden’ – May 29th – 31st. Now I am going to show one or two pictures of my working environment and on another occasion I will show you what I have been working on this weekend and the ‘gallery’ in the conservatory where
Very briefly I will mention the workshop at Goodnestone Park Gardens. As always they are lovely hosts and we had a large airy room to do the workshop.
The workshop went well and again there were some lovely students who worked really hard. I noticed that by the end of the first day they wondered what their results would be like, but at the end of the two days all were happy with their work and felt they had learnt something new.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take any photos to embellish this page, so you will have to imagine deep red Peonies, clematis and Wisteria. None of which are simple plants.
At the moment there is a mess all round me. This weekend we are taking part in the Chichester Art trail. Essentially, it is open studios. Here in Bosham there is quite an enclave of artists, so many people choose to spend one day in this area. Bosham is a lovely place anyway and we do have a lot of visitors generally. This is an extra good excuse to visit the area.
As usual we are setting up a gallery in the house, but I will also be working in the studio. This usually attracts many questions and people who were not initially interested in botanical art, have succumbed. I don’t think I have talked them into the ground, but many have obviously become interested in a subject they knew little about before.
Anyway, I don’t think you want any pictures of this mess until it’s been sorted out and pictures hung where they are meant to be. If you have the opportunity, I do hope you will plan a trip to Bosham either this weekend (which includes the Monday bank holiday) , and next Saturday and Sunday, it will be 10:30-17:30 each day.
In the village there will be loads of signs and balloons marking the spot. I am number 14, so you just need to follow the signs.
GAYNOR'S FLORA 