Another detangling session later, and I cannot believe the loop-the-loops these plants make! I really couldn't have made it up myself. These mad convolutions seem to happen when the flowerhead withers and drops away to reveal the fruit pod.
There were several nasturtium plants all winding around each other in the garden photo I've been using as a reference point for drawing, but keeping in mind I want to make a composition of crazy plants in fluted pots I started separating individual stems from last week's tangle. Trying to work out what belongs to what was a fun challenge. I sketched this on my iPad using an 'ink bleed brush' with a variable line weight, but its delicacy and lightness is making me want to draw with real ink and brush, or even a fountain pen on paper! I've been collecting fluted and ribbed items from around the house, looking for suitable pot suggestions for the plants to inhabit in my drawings. From dainty little egg-cups to Indian carvings in marble and sheesham, I am excited by the differing scales; I have an image in my head of tiny pots next to large ones, which I have begun to explore in the above sketch. In the centre image of the collage below, there is a very large old hand-made ceramic pot which has just always been around. The photo doesn't do it justice, as seen here it could easily be a yunomi - but in fact it measures 25cm in diameter. I love that pot, but don't know who made it; I remember it originally being in my grandparents' house from the early 1960's when I was a very little girl - so perhaps it was made by a friend of theirs, or maybe a serendipitous junk shop find.
As I worked directly on top of the plant-like elements I had inserted in last week's drawing, I was already replacing them with another idea for wild, manic plants twisting and pushing from fluted pots for the next one. I realised last week's didn't work because there were two different ideas going on in a small drawing: the plant elements were flat and cartoon-like, whereas the fluted forms bear the illusion of three dimensionality - basically, there were two styles of drawing not sitting well together.
This time, with a clear idea of what I want to achieve, I began with a simple line sketch of nasturtiums. It's an idea which began to take root (pun not intended) late last summer, when I photographed fascinating plant activity in some of the weirder areas of the garden - so much stranger and more intriguing than anything I could make up! Truth is stranger than fiction, so this sketch of nasturtiums is based on one of those photos. Just two weeks on and my avocado stone sprout is going crazy. The first one to sprout is pictured below, but the latest, No.3, is really scaring me - its root is all twisty, and when I move the jar it lashes around like a worm, and it has produced something snaky and hairy in its water. Nature is terrifying, I'm the rabbit caught in the headlights - I don't want to look, but I can't stop looking. These are my very first successes after many years of trying to get an avocado stone to sprout! (Apologies for hairy finger, looks like everything is sprouting right now) I just can't believe how this detail from Before There Were Saturdays relates to the current avocado stones sprouts, given I have never had any success with growing them before.
By the way, I am thinking about doing something different with new work moving forward. I still haven't found what it is, but it will happen. Shortly after drawing last week's sprouting carrot tops, I drew a the core of a bell pepper. Its flesh had been cut away for a salad leaving the arched pyramid form with its bustle of seeds inside, rather like a deconstructed buttressed church sheltering a congregation. Or a big ghastly alien throat, if you prefer. It hung around in my work room and began involving itself in a most interesting process - I wouldn't say it was decomposing, because nothing went mouldy (wrong PH for mould, perhaps, a bit like sourdough culture?) - the fleshy parts just began to disappear leaving the seedball intact, I suppose by dehydration. I drew it again collapsing upon itself, pictured below. I didn't throw it away after drawing it, I seldom do throw away these things, hence my collection of gross objects which will freak anybody out when I die and they come to empty my room. But look what it has become now. The photos below show what's left; it's the size of a conker now, and the small remaining part of the base of the pepper (right pic) has become a pretty flower. From a big, proud, glossy green fruit my bell pepper has gone to this - fascinating, as Spock would say. It actually feels nice to handle.
Oh well, I suppose it happens to us all in time! I will get around to drawing its remains soon which will clarify what I see, something photos cannot do. And I may even experiment with growing the seeds. Mixing it up, adding non-observational elements to drawings. If you would like to read about how I both flooded my kitchen and had a fire in it, visit The Weekly on my illustration site Binky McKee. Three drawings this week: a Peruvian gourd which rattles when shaken, an enamel doggy box which is partner to the one I drew last week, and a depiction of the inside of a favourite bowl, but flattened out. I worked by turning the bowl in my hand and allowing the pattern to run straight in my drawing.
A week of rather dismal weather kept me indoors most days, so I decided to draw some of my favourite objects around the house. I discovered it is really hard to draw toys! Here are two Peruvian dolls my friend brought back for me from a stay in Peru, a little enamel box painted with a charming Spaniel, the most adorable little loved-up 1950s Merrythought bear (with bells in his ears!), and carved and painted wooden cats and a dog which sit on a shelf with their legs hanging over the edge. I hope you enjoy my shared treasures! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! This week has been no less disruptive than last week. A further string of unpredictable and unusual events of "what are the chances" nature cropped up.
These drawings were what came out of it, though. 4 great things this week: - 6 views of a dried up chestnut, trying to work out how the first root and sprout come out of the kernel - a peony tree fruit exposed after its petals fell - what was inside the dried up chestnut when I picked off the shell - a small, gnarly apple tree in the garden. I am obsessed with irises in the garden at the moment: buds transforming into baroque beauty, and the weirdness of the tubers which tirelessly sprout these miracles at the end of each winter. When I draw I like to try and understand how it all works. Similarly, I enjoyed drawing a bunch of rusty old keys I found, exploring how the keys were made and imagining their action.
The sun is shining, so I am going into the garden again! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! |
Welcome to my work journal - a weekly update on drawings, work in progress, doodles and day-dreaming.
I changed the website address a few months ago, so some older links on previous posts are broken. If you click one of those and it takes you to a strange page, simply replace the .co.uk after the heatherelizawalker. with weebly.com and it will work again. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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As well as the work you see here, I illustrate under the name of Binky McKee (my mother's maiden name was McKee, Binky was every single one of my great grandmother's many cats!)
If you would like to visit my Binky website, please click the picture above. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dissolving PeopleA symbol on the footpath outside a local primary school gradually disappearing as the image breaks up and wears away until eventually it is obliterated by leaves and barely discernible. Photographed at intervals of several months between February 2021 and November 2022, oldest at the top.
(My shoes look so new in the first pic, and note the transition to new phone in the last photo). <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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April 2024
(Sorry the archives don't nest!)
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A 2013 work book, still very much in use Please note all images on this website are ©Heather Eliza Walker 2013 - 2020, and may not be used or reproduced without prior consent. |