Starting with a tiny toadstool

I’ve been trying to draw it all week – a tiny toadstool in the improvised grow-bag that was home to the courgettes and now, with no intervention from me, hollyhocks. Studio work has come first but today, its neighbour nibbled, I’ve grabbed the last of the daylight and crouched down to … Read More

On nature day

It’s nature day at COP26 so I take a look at what nature is doing in the small world of my urban garden. Fashionably late, the cosmos is in flower. I associate it with Summer but looking it up, some varieties are happy in cooler weather. Getting closer to draw, … Read More

Cheery little forsythia flowers

Reliable Spring visitors, these yellow flowers were so vivid that I dashed in from my chilly perch to grab a highlighter. But as I drew, I noticed another colour – the pale grey-green of seeweedy lichen. Biro, watercolour, highlighter on waste paper.

Crocuses – little pops of purple

Back in the Autumn, I planted a job lot of bulbs, knowing that after a lockdown Winter, I’d need the good cheer of Spring flowers. Spending time with these little pops of purple, I found blends to blue inside and a surface sheen of deep pink. Biro, watercolour, fineliner on … Read More

Cyclamen rescued from a frozen flower bed

Like fairy dresses, flowers rescued from a solid-frozen flower bed. There’s so much movement in these petals – it’s all about the shape. I gathered these with a couple of snowdrops and some forsythia buds, a tiny indoor posy in a Nancy Main single stem vase. Biro, watercolour, fineliner on waste … Read More

Snowdrops in an improvised grow bag

Snowdrops and salad… a present, snowdrop bulbs (Thank you, Heather!), in my Columbia carrier grow bag – a flower market carrier in its former life. The little pops of leaf between are corn salad. I improvised this planter in the 2020 season, for courgettes. It gave them a fine home, sheltered … Read More

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