I've started my drawing day bimbling around sketching the lilies given to me by a kind neighbour, partly because I promised myself that I would and partly as an excuse not to go outside. It's chilly. This should be no surprise – it's November. But in this year's strange climate, it takes some getting used to.
So I resolve to draw from indoors the textures of the garden, brought out by a flat, grey light. But then I get my eye in and I see that it is, after all, all about colour.
And then, when I look at the colours, I see that their story is not the one that I had sketched-out, of distinct areas of the garden – it's the echoes between them.
The silver-green of the bowl-shaped sage is there in the feathery conifer shrub (for their top leaves, I scratch on silver ink with a stick). The yellow in the hydrangea leaves bounces back from the roses at the back of the garden. And the pink in the hydrangea leaf tips sings out from tight little Autumn roses.
None of this is my doing. Nature is pulling its own look together, like a well-styled outfit, and I am its audience.
Ballpen, watercolour, fineliner, highlighter, watercolour pencil and metallic ink on handed-down watercolour paper.
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