Archive
Nymans 2014
size A5, 5″ x 7″ approx. SOLD
This is a watercolour sketch of one of the gates to the walled garden at Nymans a National Trust garden in Sussex UK.I was sat only 12 metres from the main path but on this side path it was quiet enough that a mouse or vole was carrying her litter of babies across the path one at a time to (presumably) a better home in the long grass to the right of the path. As I say it was very quiet until two German tourists noticed me and decided that the view must be worth a photo if I was sketching it- so he went and stood in front of the gate and she came and stood right in front of me until she had her shot, not a trace of an excuse me! So rude!
The reason I went was because it was the sort of day when it was threatening rain and there was space in the car park. Due to the new charges at Wakehurst Place many people are going to Nymans instead. This is a shame as it is a much smaller garden with a more intimate scale and too many visitors would make it difficult to sit down and sketch or appreciate the garden so well.
Going back to the sketch it has a schoolgirl error in it …can you see? I will need to do some work in the studio on it or make a copy; I also need to get some opaque paint to put in the cream roses growing over the gate….or do a copy. It has a nice feel however.
Posy- a painting a week
This is as much painting as I have done this week. its a bright posy of flowers from the supermarket: roses , carnations and phlox.
Lovely aunt did one of the same vase , DIY dad went back to work after mystery illness and No1 son and No2 son hatched a plan to get the password which locks the computer from us; this involved a mini video camera and a reasonbly plausible storyline. Treasures.
#168
Roses by the dozen-a painting a day
6in x 9in 15cm x 22cm
That is the trouble, woolly mind woolly paintings. I mean to be honest I have just had to spell check the word woolly…when did it aquire two ‘l’s and why does it need them? It did look a bit lost with only one.
Half term has been and gone and I am looking at the garden on a daily basis trying to keep the screams silent….where did all the weeds come from and how did the growth start so soon after what seemed to be a harsh winter?
#165
Mrs Oakley Fisher,Study of late tea rose – a painting a day
size 6 in x 5.5 in 15cm x 13cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The sky looks like a Gauguin painting this afternoon, orange and brooding purple with patches of pale yellow over suburbia , it is not quite le Poldu but then they probably don’t have a station there.
As the colours Gauguin used are ones I hesitate to put in a picture I have to ask why and why not. This is a study of a rose where I have chosen to show all the possible colours of the background and there are the puces and oranges and the glowing pale green in the bags and folders of everyday life. Its not entirely comfortable but it has a nice exotic feel, fifties Cuba or Florida.
Well that was last night, today I don’t like it at all but it is my painting a day so…blog it anyway; it’s not for sale as I think it’s a bit unhinged. Like the economy it’s gone over the edge and that is just about to speed up it seems.
Oh..did I mention I went to the Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern?…and I got to hold a ceramic sunflower seed for …at least 30 seconds, it was like being seven again and bead swopping. Actually I think they should do that- you go to the exhibition with some thing you feel is equivalent in value (first define your value) and see if the curator will swop it for a seed.
#144 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Birthday flowers – a painting a day
size 9 in x 9 in 21cm x 21cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
I have gone back to the lovely bouquet, but cannot decide whether this is chaos or partial abstraction.
Weeds are different wherever you go, a change of soil or a new garden means that the eye has to be retrained, the unfamiliar seedlings can be confusing when they first emerge. I have been in this garden with its horrendous heavy clay for five years now; there are weeds that I did not get in other gardens. Lately I have spent quite a bit of time on the areas that were levelled with a minidigger in the spring, I have noticed some new invading weeds germinating in the areas reworked. There is plenty of Hypericum or St John’s Wort to get rid of as usual but there are also masses of nettle seedlings and horror of horrors Lesser Bindweed, which I do not get in this garden. I have reason to believe that these seeds came in on the caterpillar tracks of the mini digger. My reason being that the seedlings of pale blue lobelia have popped up in the same area and the seedlings of bedding begonia ….this time last year it had a full cover of scrappy leylandii so the opportunities for annuals weren’t great over there, and anyway I don’t generally buy pale lobelias as I love the dark blue ones. There are also plenty of thistles that are new to the garden; it just goes to show you shouldn’t let a mini digger in if you don’t know where it’s been. I have also got a stand of Verbena bonariensis mixed with bronze fennel which have come from some inadequately heated homemade mulch, that and the camomile daisies that pop up everywhere are my fault.
I have had to attack a useful hedge in the front garden as I am afraid that the honey fungus which attacked the crabapple in the road has moved on to the cotoneasters. There are signs of die back and I think it is best to remove even healthy looking bushes to reduce the food stores available to the ceps’ psychotic axe murderer cousin Armillaria. I do not want it to get to the apple trees. I was very annoyed with the council as they did not cut the infected tree down quickly. I wish now that we had done it ourselves after discussion with the neighbours…how long would it have been before the council noticed, would they ever have noticed?. Luckily yew is fairly immune to honey fungus so I can transplant some seedlings to start to get a bit of cover back. Hebe is also less likely to be attacked and I have a couple in pots which were free to a good home and one which I could transplant.
The Tigridia flowered today and I forgot to get out there and take a photo, also forgot to pick up son from school which is a bit serious. I have apologised to him here is a picture of the Hedychium instead of theTigridia promised on Twitter.
#126 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
A posy of Albertine roses – a painting a day
Click here to purchase size 4 in x 6 in 11cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
It began with some rain on the velux window this morning. A promising start but the actual amount of rain hasn’t been enough to soak the soil. Therefore I still had to water lots of stuff. I even got over to the developing yew hedge which is slowly getting big enough that the neighbour won’t be snickering at it….well by next year he won’t I’m sure…. just ‘cos he’s got a ten foot high beech hedge! So far this year it has grown about six inches, a foot would be better, it grew a foot last year and I would like a foot this year.
The yew is a replacement for some of the boundary Leylandii and was bought when it was about 12inches high. It has got to 20 inches to 36 inches high now and most of them are interlaced with their neighbours.
That’s the trouble with malleable well behaved plants they can take ages to get established. I have a very beautiful single peony which once happy provides three things, red shoots in spring, huge floppy flowers in June and a bit of autumn colour. Once it is happy it should provide that every year without any real work or expense. It will never invade the whole garden, shed unwanted seed, or turn into an uninviting mouldy heap- but this particular peony is still sulking five years after being planted; one flower this year and one last is all it is prepared to commit to.
Talking of plants which do spread a little too readily the Geranium pyrenaicum which I chopped to the ground recently has already sprung back with new leaves and some flowers. I did not note when I did chop it down but it can only have been a week or two ago. I am composting the cut stuff as the compost is working fast and hot at the moment, it’s shrinking back very quickly every time I stuff more weeding and vegetable peel in there ;in other words I am confident the seeds will not ripen in the compost they will most likely get cooked.
No2 son has needed hosing down on the lawn after school the last two days he is so hot.
We forgot to go and pick the strawberries today.
Today’s painting is the opposite of yesterdays simple stark redcurrants, it’s summery and garish; I am trying to come to terms with it but there it is it is what I painted today. The roses are some I bought barerooted a couple of years ago. They are supposed to be decorating the holly bushes as they regrow to make one of the boundaries with the road, for once the plants are doing what was planned and the strings of coral buds look fantastic.
#88 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three carrots – a painting a day
Sold size 3 in x 8 in 8cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There are some pretty carrots to be drawn today…they are not home grown but they were picked by my mother in law.
Today was one long extended watering session.
The lavender is coming out and so are the Gazenias, I have yellow ones in a pot and pink ones in a bed, I have a pet hate of many mixtures that are sold either as seed or plants. Gazenia mixtures set my teeth on edge. I’m iffy about mixed antirrhinums and wallflowers too. I think it’s the combination of bright clear yellows with deep pinky reds and brick reds. Especially lemon yellow with a deep red, shudder it’s the visual equivalent of someone scraping a nail down the blackboard.
To get back to Gazenias the yellow and white mixture that I had is good and I have saved some of the plants over winter, they are bigger than the bought pink ones and opened flowers just before the pink. So because they are good plants and free for this year, overwintered Gazenia win. I need to do it better next year and save them all. They were outside but wedged in between the wood store and the house wall.
My new rose opened out, Mrs Oakley Fisher; she is a starlet of some potential. Single apricot with stamens stained scarlet at the base, five big curvaceous petals.
#84 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Veilchen blau – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 5 in x 4 in 13cm x 11cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There is a real feel of summer that has built up steadily over the last few days. I however am in no fit state to enjoy it as I have the worst summer cold ever …oh I’m sorry I have moaned about that already on the blog.
The weather is so good that he wants a barbeque after work, his work that is as I do no work, allegedly.
Today I made Melon and Strawberry water-ice, it’s very, very pleasant it has enough bite to get through even to my afflicted tastebuds.
I also had to take No1 son to the Passport and Immigration Office to check that he is who we think he is. They apparently asked him when we, his parents had been born and where. I had a momentary panic thinking of the power of the tick box mentality to disregard the blindingly obvious, because obviously a genuine British teenager will simply snarl if asked a personal question and will be worse when asked about his terminally embarrassing parents. But a convincing “I dunno” should be the answer that shows they are genuine! I hope I am right, we find out if he is the genuine article in four days time. At least if we have to go back I shall know not to park where they recommend as it cost me £4.00 almost £8.00 an hour.
This picture is a climbing rose that I planted it is called Veilchen Blau which translates as Violet Blue. It’s not blue, I haven’t touched a blue pigment yet and it’s nearly finished. I am glad I don’t aspire to true blueness in roses (or anything else except good steak), because ultimately roses don’t do real blue. In Parkers catalogue they used to sell Blue Moon (the nations favourite rose) which whenever I saw a real one was a mucky washed out mauve, however in the catalogue it was always pictured as a true blue. Silliness.
#82 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Iris and bud –a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This is me being a tag tart.
I was so surprised to find that my rapidly put down on paper picture of an Iris got more hits on e-bay than anything else I have offered for sale on its first night that I am inclined to experiment and discover which is the most popular flower image wise. My guess is it will be either a poppy or a sunflower but it could be a lily of some sort.
There is a sort of freedom attached to the daily blog thing as you do a picture and move on to the next thing. It seems worth not getting too repetitive in order to reflect the seasons and to entertain the readers /viewers. Ordinarily I might not choose to do sunflowers for example as they can look just a bit clichéd. Having said that, I did put them in the background of my picture of pumpkins that won the prize at the Summer Exhibition in Botswana, and it was a picture I was happy with. Irises I could paint until the cows come home as they are so interesting . There are three triangular arrangements of three petals, three standing up, three falling downwards and three reaching out. Then to make it even more complicated there is the beard which could be a tiny upturned scrubbing brush if it weren’t for its clean gold colour. There are also the spiralling buds in a colour so dark I always think I’ve got a black one until they unfurl.
I include here photo of one of the best garden Alliums for floral display…the star of the backdoor bed …I give you the humble and very useful Chive!
Also a picture taken, on a sunny day, of the half moon border; the pansies are a proper purple yet they look an inky blue in this shot (and all the others I took) Today’s painting, an Iris given longer to develop on paper, is actually rather bluer than it has photographed. That is most likely a problem with the artificial lighting but the pansies were taken in daylight so should come out closer to true hue.
The other thing I did today was to go to the gym to get some help with my knee problems. Not really my natural environment, I said I’d never been before which the instructor found hard to believe.” What not even when you were younger …at school?” she said, I looked at the rows of grey and black torture apparatus and had to say “I don’t think any of this had been invented when I was at school”. I mean we had a dusty old leather horse that you could be asked to jump over, but it was definitely not cool to do so with any sort of skill. If the Gym Mistress did not roll her eyes in despair, you had failed dismally. I tried not to be too gloomy and did my practice five minutes on everything but I really can’t imagine how people manage to go to the gym for pleasure. Afterwards my knee hurt and I don’t think it is supposed to.
Alison
#65 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Rugosa rose, open for business –a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
My MP’s secretary e-mailed back wanting to know where I lived….will the Big Man be sending round the boys?
Perhaps she thought I was writing to the wrong MP, she can hope.
It occurred to me today in mid-rant that if our new ministers were in a new job (aka normal employment) they’d be on probation for the next six months and it would be a foolish employer who let them loose on Big Ideas which could go horribly wrong; horribly wrong Big Time. It’s not as if they were all headhunted for their specialist skills is it? So there’s no reason for them to get Big Headed and think they can run before they’ve learnt to toddle….there’s a theme here, I’m trying to remember what inspired it.
Thank goodness for that little bit of rain, it has meant that instead of watering I have moved a number of plants into their permanent position. I am doing this on the basis that the weather forecasters are right and we will get further rain on Saturday to keep them alive. In the shady area two of my Tiarella seedlings are in flower they are lime green not white but that’s fine. In one corner I found that the Epimedium had just sprung up from nowhere…I was sure I had lost it. I am now on the hunt for a golden hop to plant where the sun will shine through the leaves.
In the mean time we continue to consider the risks of ionising radiation on the Marshall Islands and the relative merits of sand and crushed coral when trying to persuade the disposed to move back to their radioactive tropical paradise …GCSE Science is so complicated.
I decided to have another crack at this opening rose its just possible to see the stamens in the centre, I love that ,it reminds one of the form of wild roses while being infinitely more luxurious.The variety is Roserie de l’Hay. I love all those rambler roses bred in the 1920’s they are often semi-double..e.g. Cornelia and Penelope. I am very fond too of Buff Beauty but I have not been able to buy or establish a really strong growing specimen. I tried in two gardens to make an apricot and lavender blue bed using this rose but only partially succeeded.
Alison
#60 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 
