Painting birds

These beautiful birds don’t often come down to the lower branches in my garden. A while ago I was lucky and managed to get some photos of them. These are quick pencil and watercolour sketches in my S&B Alpha sketchbook.

 Rainbow Lorikeet pencil and watercolour - 150mm x 225mm

Two Rainbow Lorikeet pencil and watercolour - 225mm x 150mm 

Tea Time at My Beautiful Things

Research is such fun, especially when you discover interesting places that have wonderful things to draw. My beautiful Things at The Lavender Barn, Newmarket, is such a treasure. 

There is shabby chic and vintage furniture, clothing, wonderful cups and saucers and all sorts of interesting collectibles. Moreover, there is also a café serving Devonshire teas and other delights - and the coffee is good too.

I have been looking for somewhere to have a sketching tea party and this is perfect.

I had time for a quick cuppa and a sketch yesterday. 

Tea cup and saucer with milk jug 

Noodler’s #41 Brown Ink and watercolour in S&B Alpha sketchbook.

Exhibiting at Botanique Bazaar

This week I will be exhibiting at Botanique Bazaar at Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

Clustered Seed Pod ink on paper © 2014 Carol Lee Beckx

I have done a number of ink drawings keeping to a botanical theme. I enjoy the stark design of black and white.The drawings have simple white frames with a white matt.

To see a complete gallery of the work to be exhibited please look on the page above:
Botanique Bazaar July 2014

A Walk in the Park

On my early morning walk this week it was obvious that the park gardeners had been busy pruning. Piles of branches lay in heaps waiting for collection. I had seen some seed pods earlier in the week and thought of painting them and tried to pick a small branch without much success. (While wondering how much trouble I would be in?)
In one heap I spied the bright orange of these same pods - just lying there waiting to be turned into compost. On my return I picked a couple of sprays with some leaves and carried them home.

Now I gave up trying to do pure botanical work some years ago - I’m too impatient and I'm not one to follow rules either - so I wanted to capture these in a free, loose manner.

Tulipwood Tree - Hapullia pendula ink and watercolour

I painted the orange seed pods first without any preparatory drawing, and then the leaves. Once the painting was dry I added a few ink lines and my story. My approach to the sketchbook page is to compose my subject as though it were on a canvas where I would not be adding and words. I still need to work on leaving space for a block of text. The other consideration when using the Fabriano Venezia is the size of the book. It’s slightly larger than A4 so it is difficult to scan. Secondly, the opened book doesn’t lie completely flat so there’s always a shadow in the gutter which is maddening. The alternative is a quick iPhone photo which is what I have done here, hence the blue cast to the photo.   

Note to self: Remember to plan for text and mark off the inner area so the sketch can be scanned easliy. 

 After completing the sketch I still didn’t know the name of the tree so I Googled:

“Australian tree with orange/red seed pods and black seeds” and there among the first images,was a lovely photograph on Flickr,  Tulipwood Tree - harpullia pendula.