Beautiful Botanicals.

Beautiful Botanicals seem to be 'in' at the moment. If you flick through glossy magazines or search particular social media sites you can find an array of ideas and suggestions of how to make your home have the botanical look. This is a 'look' that I have always had as I simply adore having plants and nature indoors. It just seems to make sense to me to try to fill my home with wonderful oxygen giving life in the shape of indoor plants. They may be a dracaena palm, ivy and many a fern.

In the midst of this greenery it gave me inspiration to explore a painting using natural resources. Whilst out on a walk with my two dogs there were plenty of ferns growing wild in the countryside. I studied them and they gave me an idea.

I wanted to not just paint them in my own way but actually use and involve them in the painting. My watercolour paint palettes came out, my favourite watercolour brush and plenty of water.

Studying the leaf I then placed it on the piece of watercolour paper in the position I wanted it to be in.

Then carefully pressing the leaves down I soaked my brush with a mixture of prussian blue and hookers green I delicately painted over each leaf.

I had to be very careful not to move the fern or else the picture would not pick up the intricate details of the leaves and each individual frond. 

The result was very pleasing to the eye. I love the random way the paint captured some of the leaves but left some of them more blurry.

Then my brain started ticking and I wondered what would the effect be like on a slightly more challenging surface such as a canvas. Ordinarily acrylics go better on canvas but I wanted to experiment by using watercolours.

So I gathered another fern and placed it on the canvas repeating the same procedure this time leaving each individual fern to dry before applying the next one.  I had to use much more water on my brush this time as it was on canvas.

For this particular piece of work I used several different shades of green and blue to contrast with each other.  The overall effect I am very pleased with. (Who says blue & green should never be seen?!) 

I am wondering what different colours such as maybe pinks and purples would look like together in this form? Maybe I will experiment with that too. 

I hope you enjoy the finished effect as much as I do. It is fun to keep experimenting with nature to create art.

RE-THINK - RE-BRANDING

So I've been thinking, as you do, and decided to re think my BLOG to what comes naturally to me. Which is painting & nature & dogs & wellies etc etc

So from now on my BLOG will mainly feature those items rather than crafty bits.

 I'm hoping to launch my own Etsy shop in the near future so if you are interested in buying any of my work I show on here then you will hopefully be able to more easily. 

Hope you have enjoyed my botanical Blog.

Nature just is.

Vicky :-)