Tag: garden

The Back Terrace

The Back Terrace. Oil on Board, 25cm x 35cm.
The Back Terrace. Oil on Board, 25cm x 35cm.

Zinnia flowers are the lazy gardeners best friend. Last year I started off with just a few and this summer they had grown everywhere, a forest of colours attracting so many butterflies and hummingbird hawk-moths. They are late summers last burst of sunshine and even though autumn is here the sun is still shining on this terrace!

What struck me to paint this scene was the way that the brightly coloured flowers light up against the dark background which I think helps to break up some of the bushy leafy greens.  After a bit of experimenting to get the flowers to jump out I decided to dull down and darken the green leaves while using different variations of colour, value and chroma to keep the green interesting. To express the brightness of the flowers which bring a bit of excitement into an otherwise big area of green I tried to keep the reds as saturated as possible, paint does not come close to real life’s value range and it is suprising how colours in nature are brighter than the colours you can make on the palette!

Ciao!

Summer Evenings…

Winnie Drawing. Oil on board, 20cm x 30cm.
Winnie Drawing (with Gwen and Lenny). Oil on board, 20cm x 30cm.

My favourite time of day for painting is in the early evening, around 5pm when the light is softer and the shadows a little longer. I am glad to show my daughter that painting or drawing nature is a valuable lesson and it is helpful for her to notice the small and simple things as well as all the wonderful colours that it offers which can sometimes go unoticed. P.S. My dog Gwen who is a retired sheepdog likes to keep watch over the cat now that she has no sheep!

Rosa Gianca

White Roses. Oil on board, 25cm x 35cm.
White Roses. Oil on board, 25cm x 35cm.

I have these white roses in my garden grown forty years ago from a single cutting taken from a rose bush by a man in the village nearby. With its dark glossy leaves and pale cream flowers it puts on a show during the spring without weakening to disease like most roses do. I was proudly told by the locals that the rose was an antique variety and a native rose from the area. Here near Genova when speaking in the Genovese dialect it called Rosa Gianca which simply means white rose.
During the spring I noticed the same variety of rose growing in most gardens out and about and I discovered after painting it that it had been created in the early 1900’s in France and was then diffused in most of Europe with the French name of Albèric Barbier!

Purple Haze

Wisteria. Oil on board, 26cm x 42cm
Wisteria. Oil on Board, 26cm x 42cm

One of the most exciting things in Spring is waiting for the Wisteria to burst into cascading purple flowers (yes, my life is pretty exciting 😉 ) but after painting this I am pretty glad to wait another year until it flowers again.

Apparantly purple is a colour linked with royalty and mystery and it is also a difficult colour for our eye to discriminate because it has the shortest wavelength in the light spectrum. I definently found this to be true while painting and comparing the flowers to the green grass!

Mimosa

Mimosa. Oil on board, 20cm x 30cm
Mimosa. Oil on board, 20cm x 30cm

A few wonderful facts about the Mimosa:

1. It lights up the winter with its bright yellow flowers

2. It inspires a delicious recipe for an italian cream cake called Torta Mimosa.

3.  A champagne cocktail is named after it (one part champagne and one part fruit juice).

However when I came to painting the tree it was almost as frustrating as trying to spread cold butter on an even colder pancake!

Mimosa and Sunflowers. Oil on board, 20cm x 30cm.
Mimosa and Sunflowers. Oil on board, 20cm x 30cm.

In the Garden

In the Garden. 30cm x 40cm, oil on linen.
In the Garden. 30cm x 40cm, oil on linen.

In the garden during a summer morning is a distant memory with all these autumn rainy days!  The darkness of the trees contrasting against the sun shining on the stone walls was helpful in this painting as it set off the dark and light values.