Apple-Pine: peonies

Showing posts with label peonies. Show all posts

Peony is a May Flower - Part 3

As the peony bouquet aged the petals opened up more, moved away from the stigma, and created a different silhouette. I no longer looked at the single flowers but at the whole arrangement. Colors were getting lighter and gentler and leaves begun to curl a bit. I enjoyed these days with the bouquet as much as the early ones and sketched it daily with all kinds of different materials: from markers to some experiments with liquid graphites and water-soluble pencils and to the printmaking tools.

Peony Garden Adventure

Well, this was supposed to be the year when I finally made it to the peony garden up in the hills above Silicon Valley. I've heard about it many times, I tried to get to it several times (all funny stories of when I followed the directions of "just up the same road" and went on foot (turned around in 30 min). Then another time I tried to go by car from the Iris garden side and almost ran out of gas... Then I was late and the garden was closed. But this year I got some bullet-proof directions, checked that that it was still open, packed a backpack with colors I wanted to use, and almost remembered to get some gas.... and... well, I got in but basically I was late. We had a few very hot days right before and I think the season was over even before that. There were many petals on the floor and many green bushes with very few flowers and all were way past their prime.

As a consolation, I used a shadow from my car to look from the top of the hill to the hills and the rest of the farm. It was a great little trip!

Peony is a May Flower - Part 2

Peonies were very fragrant but not in an obnoxious way and I enjoyed drawing them through their peak - one by one. A full vase was glorious but I did not feel that I could do justice to all of the parts if I included all five flowers and the vase and environment around it. The two flowers below were done with very different techniques. The first one is begun with ink applied directly from my little eyedropper bottle (described in this post). I smudged some of the ink with my fingers (here is my trick to keeping nails clean in a situation like this). Then I used gouache sticks (mentioned here) and added another layer of ink with a brush that has a "custom haircut". Then I added some luminance pencils.

Sketch below is started and ended with Neocolor II crayons and I used luminance pencils in between.

Peony is a May Flower - Part 1

Peonies are another flower that I measure time by - there are peony birthdays and peony neighborhood hunts in my life. Store-bought peonies are also wonderful - and prolong the season together with the photos of peonies that my friends send me from all over the world.

This year I finally got to a peony farm up in the hills - but that will be a tale for another post. For now, I will start a story of my peony season by sharing the first bunch of drawings I did when I got a new bouquet at a local Trader Joe's - one sketch that will set the stage for the bouquet on a dining table and several looks at the single flowers.

More peonies

Ink and dip pen, watercolor, a bit of gouache, some nail scratching, and stamps that were on a pen package a few years ago - I am cleaning my studio, and all sorts of things from the past are finding their way into my sketchbook.

Peonies

For a few years now I made a plan to go to a peony nursery in the hills above San Jose, California, and for a few years now something has come up and plans have changed. This year was not an exception but I got some lovely buds from the local store to paint. And draw. And try all sorts of materials to capture them - as peonies - from the shapes to fragrances and to colors and shadows that they create are one of my absolute favorites to try and capture. A peony tag on this blog will show you my peonies through the years.

Peony Season 2

Did I mention Peony Season?
Well, this bouquet made my kitchen a place of the explosion of color and joy for a few days :)

Peony Season

It is Peony season! I got a bouquet and lots of people are sharing their peonies with me these days. I think my sketchbook might explode with these a for a while - but after all that is a big reason for my sketchbooks to exists - to catch all the explosions :)

Here is a link to a little shaky timelapse of the process:

Sketchbook Leftovers: Tools and Flowers

Sketchbook leftovers: little things that are in front of me. Like the bottlebrush flower which I picked up on my run or peonies that I purchased impulsively, and which never opened despite my attempts to follow the youtube advise of warm water soaks, gentle massages and full sun exposure. And sometimes sketchbook leftovers happen when there is a table in need of a cleaning - but who cleans before documenting details about the glorious mess of art supplies? Not me :)

Peonies

I painted yellow peonies earlier this spring but lamented their lack of fragrance. These beauties were full of it - and I had a blast trying my new watercolor plus gouache set-up! (I am still testing it for portability and will report when I settle on something :)

Peonies

I love peonies and found out about range of varieties only when I visited NY Botanical garden years ago. Every year I try to discover some peonies in our neighborhood and visit them. This bush was planted just a couple of years ago and so far it was the very first one to bloom in each season. These peonies have an amazingly hard to reproduce gentle yellow color and no fragrance. I visited them with my gouache palette and painted the bush and some separate flowers.