2011 A Year in the life of a Magnolia x soulangeana Tree

Silver medal

We had quite a large Magnolia x soulangeana tree in our garden on the south coast of England. Watching the changes and differences each year prompted me to use this as my subject for my first RHS exhibit. Roughly three years after starting the project I wrote a piece about each of the 8 pictures to go with each one during the exhibition. The following PDFs contain this information.

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2014 “Small is beautiful”; a series of crab apples

silver gilt medal

I went straight into preparing for my second RHS exhibit after finishing with the Magnolia series. This time I decided to do something with smaller detail, but I also wanted to use colour pencil.

I enjoy using colour pencil as well as watercolour and have periods using either. I also wanted to show that just as much detail could be shown with colour pencil as with watercolour.

By the time I started the project I had already started collecting crab apple trees for my garden, so this became a natural choice of subject. The RHS had also changed the minimum number of pictures for an exhibit, from 8 to 6.

This time I had less ‘writing’ cluttering up my stand at the exhibition, but I attach what i did write as PDFs. One is the label for each picture showing what each numbered part is.

NB: At the judging, the botanists marked me down for the scale bars that were at an angle. Apparently the scale bars should either be horizontal or perpendicular. This was useful information for me and also useful to pass on to you if you are a botanical artist!

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