irises

Final day at Stansted and more

| Gaynor's Flora

I am so tired. Happy, but tired.

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.

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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.

The irises so far.

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Stansted garden Show – setting up day

| Gaynor's Flora

A long day!

Thankfully the weather has been gorgeous. Driving the short way to Stansted (15 minutes), we felt so blessed living in such a beautiful part of the country – especially when the weather is so nice. Apparently it will be just as nice tomorrow and, Saturday may not be as bad as first forecast.

Now why am I focusing so much on the weather? One reason is because I am British and we do that. The second reason is because my pictures are now in a big marquis waiting to be shown to the publics. The third reason is the visiting public. Where would we be without them and why would they visit the show if the weather was awful?

Actually, in the UK, people don’t necessarily stay away because of bad weather and they certainly do come if it means a chance to see unusual plants for their gardens. But it certainly makes the experience more fun if the sun is shining – which it seems there is a good chance for it to do so.

I haven’t got too much to comment about the work put in today, other than that there seem to be an awful lot of very nice people working to put the show together at Stansted. They are extremely effective and I take my hats off to them. Additionally there are a lot of very nice and happy stand holders there. I am looking forward to the opening of the show tomorrow.

This our packed car parked in our drive this morning. I did manage to squeeze into the front seat.

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Do come to see us. Tomorrow I will be working on my botanical painting of the Irises in coloured pencil.

Today at the SBA exhibition at Westminster

| Gaynor's Flora

It has been a long day but a very good one.

We took the 2hour train journey up to London today in time to start demonstrating when the exhibition opened at 11:00. I had hardly time to get out my equipment – let alone sit down, before keen botanical artists arrived to watch me demonstrating.

As planned, I took out the Watercolour of the Irises to use as my subject for the coloured pencil demonstration. Luckily I had managed to get a bunch of Irises in the way through Victoria Railway Station that was exactly the same colour as the original irises. I now had both the irises as a suitable botanical subject and the completed watercolour painting,

At any one time there were quite a few people sitting or standing to take in the demo. The actual demo went very slowly as everyone had so many questions about the technique. This meant that apart from a lot of talking, I also showed people how to do several different techniques associated with coloured pencil. I am told that they found this interesting and useful.

Apart from anything else, I hope that I have encouraged those who had some interest in botanical art, to try it; or those who have only used watercolour to have a go with coloured pencil.

I met several people who had been to the RHS botanical art exhibition in April and who had seen me and/or the crab apple exhibit. In some instances the exhibit seems to have encouraged people to come to watch the demo today. I hope it was worth it. It definitely was for me as I met so many lovely people.

My husband took the following picture this afternoon when there were fewer people watching.

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This second picture shows two of my pictures hung at the exhibition in the black and white section. They are of course in pen & ink. Additionally you will find two further coloured pencil pictures exhibited.

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Tomorrow I will be teaching a class in the morning and marking assignments from the London Art College after this is finished. I doubt that I will have time to do any painting for myself, so the coloured pencil irises will have to wait. A shame as I have the right colour ones for the moment!

Open studio in Bosham

| Gaynor's Flora

The Chichester open studios art trail started its second and last weekend, today. The weather as hoped for, was very good although it has blown quite hard. The wind has not kept people at bay and we had a lot of very interested visitors.

We got a few visitors who chanced on our set-up and as always I took this as an opportunity to get them interested in botanical art. However, it seems that most of our visitors had highlighted coming to see my work.

For the first weekend I decided to paint irises in watercolour as I had spent so long using colour pencils on the crab apples. Our visitors were very interested in the progression through drawing and first layers of colour. I continued with the painting during the week as the irises rapidly died. How to finish the painting without the flowers?

I bought some new irises, but they were redder than the original ones. Today I have continued the painting using the new irises for their form and size, but I had to bear in mind the colour palette I needed to use.

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I will be continuing my demonstration on the irises for whoever is interested on the last day of open studios tomorrow.