in the studio

Tropicana rose etc. on gray seamless paper

Today the last rose from the garden was crying out to be featured in my sketch book. I set up a small seamless paper to give it a little more focus and got to work. First I draw with my water based ink - fountain pen. Then I begin mixing and filling in the colors stating with the background usually.

the set up

final sketch happens to be on the first page of a signature in my hand made sketch book. See the glass beads that are sewn between signatures?

trimmed to focus on the sketch

I am pretty happy with the results but I think after looking at the photos I could have used the orange of the rose hips on the rose instead of the salmon pink I chose if I was going for exact reproduction. I also see that the burgundy leaves were darker at the bottom near the pink sedum. Looking at it with naked eye I could not make out that shadowy area. That is one of the examples of how photos change the real and flatten things out that your eye sees better and with much more detail of shading.

roses & new birds

The past two weeks I have, by chance, noticed some new birds in the neighborhood.
Lucky to have my camera to snap a photo and bring them in to look up in the bird guide. Yesterday while on my daily walk I noticed was a pair of unusually colorful birds. They flitting here and there among the yellow flag iris, yellow false indigo and roses at the Brookland Monastery. I went up there to exercise and look to see if my favorite roses were in bloom and this is some of what I saw.

Yellow False Indigo(Baptisia sphaerocarpa)

Iris pseudacorus (yellow flag iris)

adult male Baltimore Oriole sits in a white cedar

Besides the great roses that bird was a real surprise. I can 't ever recall seeing the famous Baltimore Oriole any where and here I saw two a pair, one male and one female and I chased them around the garden for a few minutes trying to photograph them. I got one decent shot once the male took a seat in the tree and sang a little. It was a high point of my week. 

Not long ago I also found an Eastern King bird in my own garden who only passed through and has not reappeared, I assume it was on it's way home to some other place from it's winter's migration home. 

eastern king bird in the choke cherry tree

the eastern king bird is on the fence below the bird house waiting on the dove to leave room in the bird bath for a passing visitor

The tiny House Wren returned to our yard and seems to like that new bird house on the shepherd's hook I installed this year. This weekend he filled it up with twigs. I recently read that the males build as many as 12 nesting sites and the female chooses the one she likes. It is interesting to know this now because in past years he put twigs in several gourds and bird houses I hung in our trees and then I saw the female come visit and choose one before I knew the whole story. I wondered  why he was building so many nests. Now we know! 

red and white

Tulips and roses grace my book shelf this afternoon. I am just home from my stress test and echo cardiogram tests and everything seems to be OK, at least nothing exceptionally unusual was discovered. I spent hours waiting for my turn to be tested in a series of tests that make up the stress test which was rather frustrating on an empty stomach. It is good news to know that I don't have some major problem but I will not know the full story until near the end of the month when my doctor will have reviewed all the test results in detail and brief me on my condition. It is a relief to have this baseline testing done at last.

My good nurse was great help today, taking me first thing to the clinic for my tests and bringing lovely flowers for me to draw and photograph this week. After three days without coffee or any caffeine he made me a pot of fresh coffee and found a chocolate cup cake to enjoy when I came home. What a prince! During my long waits at the clinic I read about 6 chapters in my book on the two John Tradescants royal gardeners to James I and Charles I of England. Only a couple more chapters to read before I reach the end of their story. Besides rare and exotic plants they also collected a cabinet of curiosities which are still housed at Oxford University and include a mantle which is reported to have belonged to Powhatan the Chief of Chesapeake Indians and father of Pocahontas. It is still there for visitors to see and may have been collected by the younger John Tradescant when he went to Jamestown, VA in the 1630's to collect plants, shrubs, trees for gardens and curiosities for the Tradescant ark.

red roses and a post card

Each morning I look around the house for something to sketch after I get my first coffee. This week we have a lovely bunch of red garden roses and a new (to us) vase to hold them. I think the vase is fine crystal it catches the light nicely and this bunch of deep red roses are perfectly suited to the shape. The post card is by a Dutch Artist named Dick Ket painted in 1932, "self portrait" with a red geranium was an interesting companion. This morning I am grateful for the flowers and vase brought home by Keith. The Ket post card came from Cor in Holland last year celebrating Sint Nickolas Day (Dec. 5th with Dutch chocolates) you also see a small abstract Cor Windhouwer painting behind the vase and a little red Buddha and the tiny marble & wood kaleidoscope.

blurry shows the winter's cold light

pen & ink sketch of my roses and post card. 

Dick Ket was a real home body, he suffered a heart condition that kept him living at home with his parents where he painted still life and self portraits until his death in 1940. He completed about 140 paintings, 40 of them self portraits. Wikipedia has a short Dick Ket bio here.  He was part of a artists movement called Magic Realism. 

visiting

newest rose of the garden: "Pat Austin" a shrub rose, orange petals with a yellow reverse

"Pat Austin" mom's newest rose

fire red-orange lily blooms it's first season in ground after a nice show in a pot the last summer or two.

first season in ground pink-white lollipop asian lily blooms

Blue hosta, tall iris foliage and yellow-green shrub have nice color texture variation

I went for a visit this week to Manassas where my mother lives and we spent time doing some of our favorite things. Shopping for garden flowers and linens and eating good food. We bought and planted new flowers on the porch and in the garden. We arrived at the garden store just as they were unloading a fresh batch of plants for the memorial day weekend sale and got first choice of everything. We also enjoyed a visit to the Manassas farmer's market on Thursday and in spite of the high heat, had fun looking and brought home some good stuff. I found a yard of paisley fabric for a dollar at the Hospital's thrift shop then we ate pizza at Tony's and browsed antiques at a new Pink House shop that day. Once we got home and had a short nap the evening we were a little sun struck from going in and out of hot parking lots to cold stores and back to hot car again earlier in the day. We watched news about the American tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico all evening. The oil spill is like a bad dream you want to wake up from and declare a ban on the use of all fossil fuels. Then you realize we could not live the way we do without those dirty easy fossil fuels and wonder when someone is going to show some leadership and guide the nation and the world towards clean energy. Our current leaders are not doing a very good job of changing our dirty oil and coal habits.

It was a nice visit and I am looking forward to a return trip to finish up planting the new rose and some other work that needs to be done in the garden. I am wondering what will be blooming on the next trip.

brookland gardens in May

pink old fashioned roses

meadow view from Franciscan Monastery gardens

formal rose garden at the Franciscan Monastery

white peony on Shepherd St. NE

striped climbing rose at the Monastery

Shepherd St.NE orange bearded iris

This part of the city has so many trees and yards full of flower gardens it is a delight to tour this time of year. We also have a great formal garden up on the hill at the Franciscan Monastery that is always a delight to visit but especially in May when the roses bloom. I took off about 2:30 in the afternoon to go see what I could find to share with you. The wind was howling and blew down a few branches and whipped the flowers around making tight focus difficult but I did my best to document some special moments. All the images are available in the Brookland Gardens 2010 set on my flickr.com but here are a few that might encourage you to click over and take a closer look.

In addition to photos of Brookland I am looking forward to going out again on Saturday May 15th for the 27th International Sketch Crawl in "Washington, DC" to draw and hang with fellow sketch artists and show them around our neighborhood which has been selected as our focus for the DC group. You can join us, we have a facebook page here.

If you are in other cities around the world, you might find they are also participating in a sketch crawl this weekend you can join. The main forum which requires you to join up to find the artists in your area is here http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/

To close this short video of the wind in the siberian iris.

helping at home

detail of a rose bud

red rose

new drape

 window's new curtain frame

Last week I took off for a few days with Mom and we got all my wash and folding done. Then got to work on hanging the drapes we bought a few weeks back. The hard part was hanging the curtain pole, or rather the part that I was not looking forward to was hanging the pole. It turned out to be easy easy easy... so I don't know what all the fuss was but some chores just invoke fear or anxiety about doing them correctly. I got the curtain pole up and hung the curtains and now that part matches the dinning room curtains and they are lined with two layers to keep out the cold and the unwanted direct light of sun rise and later afternoon sun that can over heat the house in summer although it does help warm it in winter. Pictures are not decorator magazine quality but we were happy to have the chore done. It looks nice for a change. I can't remember how long it has been since we had it looking this way. I was also happy to see the little red rose is blooming in the yard trying to beat the first frost that will slow it down for the rest of this year. 

summer soon to be here

May closed with numerous blooming roses in Washington, DC and I took a long walk to collect a few photos of them because there is no prettier bloom on a rose than the first flush in spring. I used to grow a lot of roses and even had luck with floribunda roses in extra large terracotta pots years ago. They were so nice that some creepy guy came and took them away pot by pot over the course of a few weeks.  He dropped one and that ended the thief's interest. the first winter they all died after an ice storm deposited two inches of solid ice on them twice in one winter, very unusual weather for Washington DC. However it was all beautiful in spring and it still is where every you happen to see them. On my recent sunny afternoon walk I collected a few good photos of the neighbor's roses and the Monastery roses at the top of the hill here in Brookland. I also bought and planted a new type of rose called the care free shrub type rose for my mother on Mothers day in her yard. I steer away from roses now because of all the troubles we have with fungal infections on them in this region and the toxic spray needed to prevent those black spot and powdery mildew fungi. Since I came to Brookland I have become enchanted with the birds and bees and butterflies and fungicide kills them all. Guess they always looked best in spring before the fungi got to them anyway! Thanks to all those neighbors who have found some way to raise lovely roses; I hope none of you Brooklanders are using fungicides on your roses. I only have two in my garden they have been seen in previous posts.