Apple-Pine: hyacinth

Showing posts with label hyacinth. Show all posts

Spring Garden In a Pot (Table Gardening).

I love following flowers on a day-to-day basis, and every spring, I get some sort of bulb to grow, and this year, I got a whole little garden of bulbs to follow! It was a marvelous adventure, impossible to draw (at some point apart from a two hyacinth flowers there were 6 tulips and over 20 daffodils - all miniature and all sitting in a 6" pot on my table). But I got to draw some of them! Today I was moving the bulbs into "summering" storage and realized that I never shared any of these sketches - so here is part one of my selection :)

Rogue garden and ink shopping plans

A little while ago I reported on some fungi growing on my succulents - well, those are gone (thought we had a lot of rain so they might be back). But I realized that the area near my place where I "deposit" bulbs when they are done blooming in my patio garden became a garden by itself!

I think more might be coming - but this is a report as of early March :)

The lovely purple ink in these sketches is a Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa (iron gall) Ink. It will kill your fountain pen within 24 hours but it has such a great range of tones and works so well with fingerpainting that I cannot stop using it. I carry a little vial and apply it directly on my pen and I am seriously considering getting a gray-blue version of this iron gall ink from Rohrer & Klingner - called Salix though a close contender is For Gray Document Ink from De Atramentis. I just finished a bottle of that ink and it was a glorious waterproof ink suitable for both drawing and writing.

Plant Eviction

I bought this little garden-in-a-pot (a concept I enjoy) and sketched it a couple of days into its stay on our kitchen table. But very quickly my allergies informed me that the hyacinth is not my friend and in fact is a serious enemy. It filled the whole house with fragrance and despite some effort put into denial, I had to evict the whole little garden outside. Where there was a lot of wind and rain and... well, I did not draw it after eviction. But it is getting a lot of watering!

Hyacinth in gouache

Two looks at my hyacinth - using gouache in my sketchbook.

Hyacinth in Progress - Using Stencils, Gouache and Pencils.

As hyacinth was growing and changing almost hour by the hour I made a series of prints using stencils, masks, gouache, and a few accents with colored pencils for details. One of the stencils looked interesting by itself and ended up glued to the back of another sketch at the end (last image in this post).

These are sketches of the process of growing. They are done a little bit at a time time with the big shapes pre-painted based on one stage of the flower development and then some texture added with all sorts of tools. And after the background dried, I would sit down to look and see the change that happened in the plant in that time and add details.

I have a bulb situation on my table - part 3

Some updates on the bulbs: there was little change on the mystery ones but there was a lot of rain that week and it got captured in my book.

And my hyacinth went berserk and basically opened up within one day (and was evicted immediately because of amazing but overpowering fragrance that opened up with the flowers).

Hyacinths

I have a whole bunch of bulbs growing, and I try to document their progress. But on some days, a proper portrait is made - like this one:

Sketchbook Page: New Beginnings

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to re-pot some of my new tiny plants and while I was looking for soil I found a bulb! It had a very pale hint at wanting to grow into a real plant so I put it in some water and added to the story of my day - along with quick portraits of the repotted tradescantia and my notes of the blues that I carry in my gouache palette.

Naming my Hyacinth: part two

And the name is.... Bernadette!

Naming my Hyacinth.

I had a hyacinth last year and drew it as it grew - here is a post with lots of images:
https://blog.apple-pine.com/2019/07/a-story-of-one-hyacinth.html

And saved the bulb.

Then I found it last week - with a little white leaf trying to find light in a dark corner of the shed. I put the bulb in the water - now I have a new hyacinth to draw.

I also decided to give it a name and called for submissions on social media - on this page are all the names that were submitted for consideration - I think I have a decision but need to sleep on it :)

p.s. I cannot wait for it see the flowers!

A story of one hyacinth

Last spring I got a bulb of hyacinth at the store and drew it in my sketchbook. I followed it's growth and all kinds of changes - from new smells to a nasty fall. I used all kinds of materials. And then I left for a trip and did not have a chance to draw the last part of this flower's journey.

But I hope to see it's offspring next year.

Sketchbook #112: The story of old bulbs

I found some old flower bulbs in my storage this spring and realized that without any prompt from me, without a ray of light or any soil or water, they started to sprout some green leaves. Since the process began I decided to stick them in some soil I had in a box and the project was born!

These are sketches that depict my fretting as to what kind of flowers I might have (the choice was between daffodils, tulips, and hyacinthus). There was some drama too: one day my neighboring squirrel dug out some of the bulbs and one even got on the ground outside... but it did not stop the project. Plants are amazingly resilient!