It’s 8.30am. I wander out with my coffee, my improvised cardboard offcut drawing board, handed-down paper, biro, white fineliner, watercolours, a jam jar of water, my favourite brush held together with impact adhesive and hope – and a fist-full of highlighters.
The reason? Nasturtiums. Even just peeping out from their grey-blue-green plates of leaf, watercolour is no match for their brightness. I use highlighter as an under-layer, to push the rest of the colours forward.
The wild sweet peas are fluorescent too, when first out of their soft, vintage pink buds. As they get ready to make seed pods, they turn a delicate blue, which needs the opposite end of my colours, a touch of French Ultramarine from a tube, mauve puddled into it.
I need to be away but as I think of packing up I’m distracted by the first little burst of cucumber flower. Leave it ‘til later and it’ll be closed – like the courgette flowers, these open with the day – so I have five minutes. Done. Just…
Ballpen, watercolour, fineliner and highlighter on handed-down watercolour paper.
Rose sketches from this project are available as greeting cards, from the Garden Museum shop in London and at Hackney Wick Underground.
On my Teemill shop, watercolour and line sketches on t-shirts and tote bags.