It's been a while since I shared the drawings from my mi-teintes sketchbook no 30 so here they are.
Every year on my sister Rosi's birthday I draw something to remember her by and this was inspired by a walk in the woods and the navelwort flowers standing up like candles in the shady places.
I have planted several different types of lavender around our new garden sheds and these were the first flowers to appear while we were still on holiday. I picked a few bunches and hung them on the mannikin on my desk to dry.
As you can see I've managed to find a variety of colours and each one has a different fragrance, in fact the butterfly one on the left has a rather pungent medicinal smell so I probably will leave those flowers on the plants for the bees!
We met a charming Scottish couple while we were on holiday and invited them to visit us on their return journey through Brittany. They gave me a beautiful flower arrangement in a square white container which I have kept and re-used several time for flowers from my garden.
Here's a drawing of one of the collections from my garden, all the hot colours: crocosmia, Photinia leaves, St John's wort flowers and a bit of honeysuckle for the fragrance.
My Russian friend Luba is a very keen gardener and is very proud of her vegetables which she shares with her friends. This was a delicious marrow which I stuffed following her instructions.
As the summer wears on the flowers in the garden start to fade and turn into seed heads so I amused myself one day drawing all those I could find.
The nigella are my favourite with their feathery leaves and delicate colours and of course the seeds go everywhere so I get plants growing in lots of places. Justine gave me the original seeds from her own plants 12 years ago and they continue to give me a lot of pleasure. One curious thing though, the flowers are gradually turning pink from the original blue, I wonder if the pink granite of our area is having an effect as it is on my blue hydrangeas, also turning mauve and then pink!
A walk through the woods to the port for our Saturday morning coffee and here's a find, a piece of silver birch bark that I couldn't resist picking up to bring home. I had to leave it outside to dry and to let the insects escape before I brought it in to draw!
Wednesday morning at the port and the market is very busy with the holidaymakers, but the stallholders always have time for a chat and when I said I wanted this to draw the vegetable man gave it to me for free!
Well that's it for a few weeks, the art materials are already in the camper car, long before the clothes, and we're off to England in the morning. I'll see you in a month or so with another lot of new drawings to share with you. xx
