Oil Painting of Rainier Cherry Blossom

Rainier Cherry blossom as it looks today.

This is how it looked when I started my little painting, strange and a bit creepy in the number of buds crammed onto a branch. Like something out of control, or a disease. But also very beautiful. I compared it to a drawing I made of mussels clinging to a beach stone in a previous post.

This little painting is about 8"x10". I like how the bare background emphasizes the odd shape and the dancing pattern of the white blossoms. I am happy with it and want to incorporate something similar into a bigger painting.

I Can't Find My Garden

My daughter and I sat outside and had lunch under the cherry blossom on Sunday. Two days later the table and chairs are covered in cherry dandruff and I can't even find some of my smaller seedlings, buried under the thousands of petals that coat the perennial bed. Even walking around is hazardous as layers of squished petals build up on the soles of my shoes. The dramatic transformation of my garden is just another form of beauty, as spectacular as the earlier blossoms, but a little more melancholy, as with all things that mark passage and the end of something.

Rooting Out Evil Junipers

The day started quietly enough with scattered clouds and a pleasant temperature for some light gardening. I decided to plant some of the grasses that I have been saving for the new garden in front of the house and busied myself with my spade preparing the soil and getting rid of weeds...and some roots...and some branches buried under the weeds. And some bigger roots. And as the rain clouds rolled in and the sky darkened I realized I was dealing with a formidable foe - an old juniper bush, buried under weeds and, horror of horrors, interwoven with landscape cloth, cleverly installed by some evil genius gardener before my time. The rain poured down. I dug and clipped. Mud dripped into my eyes. I sawed and dug. I chatted with my perfectly groomed neighbor, wondering if she could tell that I had just wiped my nose on my manure stained sweater. I dug up some bones. (hopefully those of the previous gardener) Several hours later I pulled and staggered backwards as soil sprayed into the air and victory was mine. I think I am going to be sore tomorrow.

Cherry Buds in Oil (Yum)

These wonderful Rainier cherry blossoms are fun to paint in oils. This isn't finished but I am enjoying the pattern of the bright white against the dark background. I am working from a photo that I took three days ago and all the buds on the tree have opened since then. It helps that we have a fabulous summer-like day with temps in the high 70s (mid 20s c). Driving around the city (taking my daughter to her dance lesson and my son to a sleep-over in a tree house) I could see that the sun had brought out crowds of people and the gardens were bursting with pent up exuberance. Finally finally it is spring...maybe even summer?

Pill Bugs and Computers

As you can see I have finally managed to post a graphic in my header! I have been trying and failing for weeks now so I am suddenly in a very good mood. The solution? I posted from my PC instead of my Mac. I am not a techy so I can't explain this problem but I am happy to have found a work-around. Thanks for everyone's help and opinions on the new header. Particularly aiakirjanik who took some time to help me. Well,enough tech stuff. Back to the gardening.
Ain't no stoppin me now...
It's sunny and not freezing cold. Although I am still waiting for it to be warm enough to walk in the morning without mittens, the snow falling outside my window is cherry blossom now.

Egg Tempera Grrrr.

Here is a sketch and painting of hydrangea leaves. It is the same plant that I painted a couple of weeks ago and the leaves have grown, even though it has been sitting in a cup of water with no roots. I have become fond of the soft fuzzy leaves and wanted to paint them. I also wanted to try my new egg tempera skills so I got out my ochre and lamp black and gave it a try. First of all I made a very funny mess trying to pierce and discard the skin of the egg yoke. When I saw Olga do it during my workshop she didn't end up with yoke smeared all over her hands and dripping onto the floor like I did. At least the cats enjoyed that part. Then the painting....Grrrr. It is horrible. I don't like how each little brush stroke dries immediately and shows forever. I don't understand the appeal of tempera and I miss my oils so much that I got them out today to calm myself down. Aaaagh. That feels better. Wonderful, forgiving oil paints. They feel alive like the plants that I paint.

Still very rough, but this sketch in oil paint at least has potential. I will work on it tomorrow and see how it comes along.

A New Blog Name?

I am thinking of joining the rest of the blogging world by adopting a cute blog name. Here is the image I designed for my header but I can't get it to load in the header area. Any technical advice from fellow bloggers? Any thoughts on blog names? Thanks everyone.

Crowds of Cherries

Do so many Rainier cherry buds promise a good cherry crop? I hope so. They are opening later than the rococo decorative cherry, all frills and lace, behind it. The tightly clustered cherry buds remind me of crowds of mussels or barnacles sharing tiny bits of surface on stones at the sea shore. All they need is enough space to touch and hold on.

Icon Painting Workshop

I had the privilege of participating in an icon painting workshop over the past week. It was organized by Iconophile and taught by Philip Davydov and Olga Shalamova from St Petersburg and it was amazing. We used egg tempera with natural pigments including such romatic colours as lapis lazuli, cinnabar, terre-verte and hematite complete with all their toxic lead and mercury properties. We ground these powdered pigments with egg yolk by hand with pretty little morters and pestles and then applied them in many thin layers onto our icon. We learned varnish and water gilding and how to apply gold leaf using garlic juice and bread! I found the egg tempera difficult but would like to keep trying until it becomes as familiar to me as acrylic. I was down at Daniel Smith today buying black, white, and ochre to practice with. Wish me luck.

Rhubarb

Captain Kirk! There's a strange new life form approaching the ship...


This early rhubarb is surreal. I am not satisfied that my painting has captured its sensuousnes fully so I may try another painting. Wow. What colours. What shapes and textures! Kind of creepy.

Painting Show Opening!

I just hung my show at Macrina. All the little paintings of spring look pretty on the Big Blue Wall and, outside, the sun has finally managed to warm up the air. People are smiling everywhere. I like this fritillaria painting. The checkered pattern of the flowers is echoed in the squares of gold leaf that surround it - a serendipitous accident.

Pill Bugs

In a recent conversation I told someone that I was painting things that were growing in my garden and she asked if I meant things like roly-poly bugs. I hadn't, but I liked the idea. The previous owners of my house had spread chunky bark mulch everywhere so I had an infestation of these little guys to deal with when I started to garden. My soil is healthier now and not mulched but I still find wood lice under pots. I tried to get one to curl up in my hand but it was a brave bug and wouldn't give up the fight even though I shook it gently in my fist like a dice. I didn't want to hurt it so I gave up and let it crawl away. Do they eat my seedlings? Let's assume not. I grew up calling them potato bugs since I encountered them most often in our dark, dirt floor cellar when fetching potatoes out of the storage bin. I like them more now than I did then.

Vancouver

I spent the last few days in Vancouver waiting for my daughter's passport to be issued. This gave me a chance to stay with my Mum and Dad and to paint some of the plants in their amazing garden. Their days are filled with environmental activism and plant related passions. In these photos my mum labels pots of seedlings in preparation for Saturday's "Adopt a Pot" event in which members of the Lighthouse Park Preservation Society will come and foster out pots of native plants during the summer before planting them in Lighthouse Park in the autumn. The seedlings have been propagated by my parents from cuttings and seed over the last year. Mum and Dad are really saving the world, one plant at a time.


While in Vancouver I started a painting of my Mum's hydrangea. I like that it has such complicated little green shoots while retaining last summer's dead blooms. Birth and death... a philisophical little painting. The shoots were so complicated that I couldn't figure out what was really happening with them enough to paint, so I brought them into to house overnight to open up a little. I think I can see each separate leaf bud now. I'm not surprised that they were so tightly curled up against the elements as it was cold and actually snowing yesterday and today. It really doesn't feel like spring and everything in the garden seems to be happening later than last year.I love dranunculus at this stage or later in the summer. It just gets weirder.

Corks, Sunshine and Primulas

A beautiful, sunny and nippy morning here on the hill. The sun makes garden photography difficult but my morning walk was glorious. I found this strange little garden near my house with a ground cover of wine corks. A fancy new form of mulch? It's hard to keep up with these trends... The visual metaphor of a mound of trimmed grass was a few inches away. How delightful.


I painted this potted primula and once it is planted out I can look forward to seeing it grow again next spring.

More Magnolias

More lusciuos magnolias! These small trees are blooming along Olympic in Lower Queen Anne. I worked from my photos yesterday to make a painting of these trees, enjoying their exotic shapes and generous silky blooms.
When I photographed these trees the early morning sun backlit the fuzzy buds giving each one a light filled aura. I have tried to paint them lit this way rather than the more traditional style of icon painting in which objects are shaded darker toward their perimeters.

Magnolias

The magnolias are flowering and I saw this magnificent tree on Highland Drive this morning. I love that the grass was scattered with petals, like Easter eggs. After taking this photo I turned the corner and found the Easter Bunny!
I think I will paint some magnolia blossoms this afternoon...

Anticipation

The second day of spring and I woke to another chilly morning. NPR says that snow is falling in some parts of the sound. I will start a new painting today in anticipation on my "Spring Garden" show at Macrina which opens on April 3. I seem to live my life in anticipation of wonderful things and know that dreaming of the future is often more invigorating than its actual arrival. This is one of the reasons I love this time of year. The garden is bursting with anticipation.The cherry tree is covered in buds and I love the strength of their clean shapes even more than the cluttered extravagance of the full blown blossoms they will become.

I have so many plants in pots, waiting to be put in the ground. These hollyhocks were grown from seed last summer. I wonder if they will flower this year if I plant them soon...

The First Day of Spring!

My painting of a hellebore, one of the earliest spring time flowers in the garden. Here it is before, and after, I apply the gold leaf.