FLOWERING SHRUBS

 

Since we returned from our English trip Bob and I have both been suffering with heavy colds and chesty coughs, totally knocking us out for over two weeks now.  We managed to get the grass cut but that's about all we've been able to do in the garden except sit and wish we had more energy.

 

Fortunately we had a spell of lovely warm weather and I was able to sit in the garden and admire our flowering shrubs which are at their finest at the moment.  So I got out my new tiny tinted paper sketchbook and started to draw what I could see from my deckchair.

 

 

This got me thinking and I decided to count just how many different flowers there are in the garden at the moment and I came up with 15!  Some of them like the Camellia at the top have been flowering since January.

 

I decided to make a new mosaic picture to put in a large frame we have hanging on the stairs with a Dali print in it at the moment.  Not feeling well enough to do anything energetic this seemed the perfect project to keep me amused for a couple of weeks.

 

So every day I've taken a stroll around the garden and picked a couple of flowers to draw or paint.  I've used lots of different coloured papers and media, although the Museum pencils are the favourites being so easy to use.

 

It's quite a challenge to make each picture look interesting and not just 'a flower' and some are more successful than others. What do you think?  Botanic drawings or graphic designs?

 Each drawing measures 13.5 centimetres which will give me 20 in all when the picture is finished.

 

This one was quite difficult as the flowers are halfway down the stem, hidden in the leaves and the peachy pink is a hard colour to mix with crayons.

 

I quite like this one, the flowers are all over the shrub and it was fun to take it over the edges. 

By the way does anyone know the name of this one?  My neighbour gave it to me a few years ago and it's brilliant, flowering most of the year and even surviving serious pruning when it gets too big.

 

 

I'll finish today with the second spread in the sketchbook but I'll be back soon with more pages and flower drawings.