Bloom and Leaves

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop”  Ovid

After my flurry of painting last week, I needed to a few days to unwind, and there’s really no better place to relax and contemplate life, than under the gently swaying fronds of a palm tree.

I love date palms. They are such beautiful trees, particularly when laden with fruit, and I have been inspired to paint them many times over the years. The date palm, Phoenix dactylifera was an obvious choice when it came to selecting a theme for my RHS paintings. Unfortunately they don’t grow well in Ireland, so whilst I am here in Egypt, I need to gather as much visual information as possible (colour studies, sketches and photographs), to enable me to complete the paintings when I return to Dublin.

Dates and palm leaves studies from last year

For the last couple of years, I have concentrated on painting the fruit, but for the RHS I want to show all the aspects of this tree that make it so unique. So I have been reading everything that I can about this plant and trying to decide just how to depict it.

However before I can begin, I need to sort out my colour palette! Whilst I was happy enough painting the dates last year, the leaves were a struggle. Try as I might, I just could not get the right green. Green is always a difficult colour to get right, and palm leaves are a particularly elusive blue-green shade.

One of the reasons for their unusual colour is the waxy bloom that covers both the fruit and the leaves. 

All plants have this bloom- you can see it quite clearly on fruit such as plums and grapes, but it’s very apparent on desert plants. For years people thought that this bloom was caused by wild yeast cells, but recent discoveries have shown that this bloom, or epicuticular wax, is an important part of the plant. It's main role is to prevent water loss. It also reflects UV radiation and helps deter insects by making it difficult for them to walk on or lay eggs. Amazingly if the wax is accidently rubbed off the plant, it will grow back. Finally it helps the plant to self-clean, causing water to bead up and roll off, taking particles of dirt and dust with it. I found this really informative article which is well worth reading.

Bloom is also notoriously difficult to depict in watercolours, particularly when the use of white is so frowned upon. I know that some artists paint bloom by mixing a tiny bit of cobalt with white gouache and drybrush it on afterwards, but most (myself included) carefully paint the bloom first and build up the darker colours around it. The problem is trying to find the right bloom colour!

There was just one thing to do… make a colour chart of soft greens. The right one must be in there somewhere!!

Last year I read a really great article on the ASBA website by Carolyn Payzant, a botanical artist who has spent a lot of time painting the desert plants of Arizona. To achieve those grey blue greens, she recommended Oxide of Chromium. To my delight, I found that she was right. However Oxide of Chromium is not an easy colour to use. It’s very opaque and also heavily staining, a description that will have most botanical artists backing away in horror! I think the trick to using a colour like this is first to use it sparingly, and also to only mix it with transparent or semi-transparent pigments.

Sometimes the only way to get a colour right, is to keep practicing over and over again

I played around with several mixes and found that W&N Winsor yellow and M. Grahams Cobalt blue gave the best results. The big success of the day was M. Grahams Cobalt teal. What a gorgeous colour for bloom! I found that using Cobalt teal in my first washes gave that perfect glaucous blue, especially when I allowed a wash of Cobalt to bleed into that first wash.

Experiment with different mixes and don't forget to write down the names of the pigments

Alas, I have fallen out of love with my Saunders Waterford sketchbook. I really liked the look and size of this sketchbook, and have been using this for my date studies. The deckled edges and the creamy colour are so appealing, but I just don’t like the paper. It’s far too absorbent and rough. I switched to a piece of Fabriano Artistico to paint some date seedlings and was immediately amazed at how much nicer the surface was to paint on. It was much easier to get clean crisp edges on the Fabriano. I’ll still continue to use the sketchbook, but will probably stick sheets in.

A trio of date seedlings- colour studies which I plan to use in one of my future RHS paintings

I couldn’t resist painting one little date using the same green mixes as the leaves. This date is unripe and not full size, but the ones on the trees are beginning to turn a rosy pink. No prizes for guessing what I’ll be painting next week!

"Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." 

Claude Monet

Wicked

This week was Wicked. That is to say, that whilst I painted this week, I listened to the audiobook of Wicked, the fantastic novel by Gregory Maguire about the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Wicked

“Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be” 

Gregory Maguire

If you haven’t read it, do. It’s such a clever and completely spellbinding story, and as I followed the twists and turns of the wonderful green-skinned heroine, Elphaba, I too was immersed in greens. And like Elphaba, I found that greens are made up of many layers and need to handled with great care and infinite patience.

 

Not even a healthy dose of imagination can bring these leaves back to life!

The week began badly. After an exasperating weekend of putting paint on and then taking it off (don’t ask!), I awoke on Monday to find that my leaves had decided to curl up and die. I was very tempted to throw in the towel and start afresh, preferably with something which didn’t involve the frustrating task of painting dark green, shiny leaves on vellum.

I could have tried to paint the leaves from my reference photographs, but it’s never quite the same as painting from life. It’s strange to realise that fact, because when I first began to paint in watercolours a few years ago, I would have thought nothing of painting from a photograph. However nothing beats having the real thing in front of you. 

So I carefully selected another branch from my Calamondin tree, trying to match up the leaves in terms of size and redrew the composition. To my surprise, I found that I actually preferred the new composition… the leaves were perkier and added a fresh liveliness to the layout. Even the sun came out to add a little dazzle.

I also finally figured out my green formula. I’m taking note of the colours because if you ask me what paints I used in a month’s time, I will look at you blankly.

The greens take a lot of layers, a light hand and infinite patience

The palette set out ready for action. I didn't use all the colours in the little wells. I have a second palette to the side with my oranges and pinks.

Lemon Yellow, Cerulean, Indanthrene, New Gamboge, Permanent Rose, Sap Green were the main colours used. I usually use Winsor and Newton paints, but also have a very nice Schmincke cerulean which is quite transparent.

So the painting progresses, and Dorothy is just about to kill the witch in the mistaken belief that she is wicked. I have a few surprises myself up my sleeve. I’m so glad that there’s a sequel because there's a lot more to do on this painting!! Right, I'm off to Oz.

“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises”

 Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Pondering Pigments

Ask any botanical artist which colour causes the most problems, and you’ll be surprised to hear them say Green.

Yes, that all essential, life-giving and luscious colour is notoriously difficult to get right. Unlike many colours which can be used straight from the pan, green has to be mixed. Commercial greens just don’t work … they are inevitably too blue, or too yellow, too vibrant (yes, I’m talking about you Viridian), too bright, too dark … all exasperatingly wrong! Even Sap green, a favourite of mine, has to be toned down to make it behave.

sketchbook experiments in green

This week began with the quest to find the right greens for my Calamondin orange leaves. The leaves are a dark blue-green on top, and a yellow-green underneath. I had used indigo for my earlier studies, but Indigo is like the Mariah Carey of pigments- it's such a diva! It’s a fabulous colour but it stubbornly refuses to be lifted. It muddies up all the other colours. It’s unpredictable and at times overbearing.

There was nothing for it but to find a better blue… so I made up a chart comparing  Indanthrene, Cobalt blue, Perylene green and Indigo. I mixed them with a selection of transparent yellows. I tried possible mixes over cerulean (which will be my first wash on the leaves)… but still the elusive green was not found.

By coincidence, Robert Genn’s weekly newsletter (worth signing up for if you haven’t already) was all about yellows. I was very interested to read that one of my favourite pigments, Indian Yellow, came about by feeding cows a diet of mango leaves, and then harvesting and drying the bright yellow urine. Remind me not to lick my paintbrush!! A similar colour, New Gamboge comes from the resin of the Garcinia hanburyi tree, found in Cambodia. In fact the word Gamboge comes from the word Gambogia, Latin for Cambodia. The pigment from this resin is used to dye the saffron coloured robes of Buddhist monks.

Comparing Winsor Yellow (deep), Indian Yellow and New Gamboge. I'm still sighing over the gorgeous Indigo though... look at the lovely dark it makes when mixed with sap green (second column from the right)

Inspired by this, I decided to compare the two pigments with my blues, and was surprised to find that although they look very similar on their own, the greens that they make are quite different. In fact Indanthrene and New Gamboge seem to be the answer to my green issue! Mind you, I haven’t yet put away the Indigo, so it might yet get a look in.

So onto the composition-

All traced out. I decided that I had too many leaves, so cut off a few.

 I selected three small branches of my little orange tree. I laid the sprigs onto paper to get the feel of the composition, took a photograph , and then drew each one out carefully onto a separate sheet of tracing paper. Then it’s just a matter of playing around until you get the right arrangement. As I plan to paint this onto vellum of a similar size to the Iris foetidissima, I felt that it would be nice to get a composition that would complement that of the iris. They are not a pair, but with luck, they will be both accepted into the SBA exhibition.

Laying them all side by side, helps me to envision what the final result will be

  

However I wasn't happy with the composition, and so redrew it to come up with a better one (right)

Tracing paper is such a great way of working out composition, particularly when you have more complex illustrations. You can move pieces about with ease and, if necessary, even flip images by simply turning the tracing paper over. If you use a photocopier, you can also reduce or enlarge your traced images- very handy when planning the composition of scientific botanical illustrations.

All set up and ready for action. The little bit of silver paper bounces light back up onto my fruit to give it a bit of "oomph!"

So, with my composition and the colours worked out, it’s now just a case of getting my head down and painting! I’ll try not to suck on the paintbrush though.

"They'll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like, but that particular green, never." Pablo Picasso