A glorious Easter Saturday. Years of community gardening taught me to seize the day – and in drawing, I have to seize the moment. Once tulips get to that louche stage when they throw their petals around, they only need the slightest gust of wind to shrug them off.
As they turn and drop, the creatures move in, a little ecosystem of activity, pollen scattered, like the morning after the night before.
The first parrot tulip I spot has greenfly nestling in its centre. There’s another (just the one greenfly) curling this way and that. And on the pale pink-mauve tulips, a little snail, tucked into cool shade as the flower bowls around it.
After two pandemic years of drawing on waste to use up old swatches and dummies, I have the luxury of good watercolour paper, passed on to me by editor Katie, left more than she could use by an artist friend. I had forgotten how watercolour paper lets you move colour around, brush on water and work into it, scrape colour on with a near-dry brush. May I do justice to this haul of papery loveliness.
Ballpen, watercolour and fineliner on handed-down watercolour paper.
Rose sketches from this project are now available as greeting cards, from the Garden Museum shop in London, at Hackney Wick Underground and on my Etsy shop.
On my Teemill shop: my rose collection of t-shirts and tote bags.