Buds and Blooms

Agapanthus bud © Shevaun Doherty 2015

"Each flower is a soul opening out to nature." 

-  Gerald De Nerval

They say that there is no greater motivating factor than a deadline, but for a botanical artist, the realisation that the flowers are just not going to wait for their portrait to be painted is enough to get even the slowest of brushes flying!

After months of waiting patiently for the flowers to appear, my beautiful blue Agapanthus africanus flowers are now all blooming at once. Mild panic sets in as I suddenly realise

A Date with Colour

To be a botanical artist, you need a certain amount of obsessiveness.
Some botanical artists are obsessed with colour, making endless colour charts and memorising pigment numbers and characteristics. Others are passionate about certain plants or  habitats, tenderly creating their own leafy paradises, or travelling to the far corners of the earth to find their subject.

Date studies, 2012

For me, it’s dates (Phoenix dactlifera). I really love painting them. You would think that having painted them so many times over the years that I would be bored of them by now, but I’m not. I still find them fascinating and I still learn something new every time I paint.

Date studies 2013

Now at last the dates have started to ripen. They hang heavy in the trees, full size now, slowly changing from green to a beautiful soft pink, and every colour in between. Gradually they will turn a rich red colour, crunchy and sweet, darkening slowly through the whole range of reds and purples until they are a delicious black, becoming as soft and juicy as a plum. After that they slowly dry out and become the brown fruit that is so familiar to us all. I will need every colour in my box to capture these changes.

Date Studies 2013

They are still not ready for eating, but I want to capture the changes. Last year I did some colour studies of this green to red stage, but of a different variety. For the RHS I have chosen to work on a variety that is more common in Egypt called Hayani. It tastes better too, always a bonus.

Armed with my colour notes from both last year and my leaf studies, I started with the green dates. It’s fair to say that I struggled. The green dates had a blush of pink, and a layer of bloom which made it a challenge, because when you mix green and red you get mud.

So I just kept practicing and practicing, filling my page with dates.  Date Studies 21014

I discovered that the bloom colour depends on the underlying pigment. Where there is a green part, I used cobalt teal and cobalt. Where there was a red part, I would use permanent rose and cobalt violet. First I wet the whole of the date with clean water, and whilst it was still damp, dropped in these bloom colours, allowing the pigments to mix.  Avoiding the areas where the highlights were, I would blend in some Naples in the centre part whilst it was all still damp. I would then build up the layers of paint, blending all the time with a soft clean brush, being careful to retain both the highlights and the softer colours along the edges.

I ended up using a lot of colours! 

I've a nice big palette, but I only used about half of the paints here.

The most important thing though is to closely observe what you are painting… there are shadows and reflections where you don’t expect it. Sometimes the whole thing can come to life with the addition of a blemish or mark. From time to time, I would take some of the layers back off using clean water and kitchen towel.

 I decided to do another quick study, this time with the dates hanging in front of me. 

At first I was going to draw one little spikelet and perhaps not paint every date, but it’s addictive! I couldn't stop!!

 I will use these colour studies for a larger painting that I plan to do when I return to Dublin. 

As they say, practice makes perfect!

Color study of ripening dates, Phoenix dactylifera  'Hayani'  ©Shevaun Doherty 2014

"The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts." 

Henry Moore

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