Sketch of a Potager in Provence

This is for Ruth - I've just read on Facebook that she feels she no longer has enough time for her garden in Provence due to all her other commitments and is thinking of giving it up.

A potager in Provence
6 ½” x 12” / 29cm x 42cm, pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in
Moleskine A3 size Folio Sketchbook

This is my sketch of her wonderful potager (a kitchen garden) at Couguieux with Mont Ventoux in the background. I never got round to posting it on this blog although it was posted to Four Go Painting In Provence.

I absolutely adore kitchen gardens and can always be found wandering around them very slowly whenever I come across one!  It was therefore a real joy to have one to look after and sketch during our stay in the Postcard from Provence house.

I liked the fact that one had to walk a little way down the road to visit the potager - as we did every evening to water the vegetables.  All the water had to be transported using a hose and/or watering can so it is no little effort to maintain such a garden under the hot Provencal sun.

I sketched this potager just over three years ago. It was too hot to finish it and I really should have a go at doing a proper drawing of it as the view was wonderful.

It was one of my first sketches using the very large A3 size Moleskine sketchbook which means I can do large sketches with no binding line down the middle of a double page spread! If you're interested in the sketchbook you can find out more here - The Largest Ever Moleskine Sketchbook!

Sketching nature by the lake in Kew Gardens

Last Friday we went to Kew Gardens for the day - and spent the whole afternoon experiencing very warm weather and saying "It's going to rain soon" - but it didn't (until later that night)!

Kew Gardens - sketching nature by the lake
pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils, 8" x 10" in Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Good weather for birds though!

We have a favourite spot next to the lake where there are some benches and you can see all the birdlife as well as the plants which grow on the water margins.  The coot wanted to be in the sketch!

I've got an artwork planned and wanted some 'in situ' sketches of a plant - hence the above.

Links

• Visitor Information Map (pdf)
• more sketches of Kew Gardens

A step by step sketch of the Long Border at Great Dixter

We visited the wonderful garden at Great Dixter yesterday.  The garden was full of tourists from Europe who'd come specially to see the garden - which was looking very full of flowers and plants and absolutely splendid as usual.

My sketch of the Long Border at Great Dixter
pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Below are step by step photos of how I got to the above (unfinished) sketch which I did while sat on the seat at the end of the Long Border.  I thought people who've not seen one of my step by steps before might find it interesting.

Media used are as follows.  Links go to either my website Pastels and Pencils - Art Materials or to the Sketching Toolkit module within my website Travel Sketching: How to sketch the places you see

• Large A4 sized Moleskine Sketchbook
• a Pentel e-sharp mechanical pencil
• a Pilot G-TEC-C4 gel ink rollerball using brown (sepia) ink
• a variety of coloured pencils

Here's the sketches one by one

Sketch #1:  Mapping a pencil outline and guides

This was a complicated sketch, both in terms of subject matter, zones, and perspective.  So, as I knew I was going to be drawing with pen and ink I decided to give myself a little bit of help.

I first took a photo.  That's something I very often do to work out what to make the four lines around the edge of the sketch - what to leave in and what to leave out.

I looked at my photo and used it to map out some very rough guidelines quickly in pencil.  This took me no more than two minutes.  I was mentally looking for halves, quarters and thirds relative to the picture format as I found my guidelines.

I added in a bit of shading afterwards just to remind myself where the darks are - it's help to locate places within the picture when doing a complicated sketch.

Pencil guidelines and a bit of pencil hatching re darker tones
mechanical pencil in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

2. Starting to draw with pen and sepia ink

This photo was taken after I started to draw in the lines I wanted for my sketch. I highlight shapes - both large and small, squiggley edges of plants, edges of tonal areas, important lines and edges which guide in and around the sketch eg edge of the path, roofline.

I also started to add in hints of the colours as I find this helps me with the drawing.  Saves time trying to work out which bit is which!

Starting the pen and ink drawing for the sketch
pen and sepia ink in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

3. Starting to add Coloured Pencil

Initial layers of coloured pencil are focused on the things I need to resolve the distances involved.  I find if I get the foreground, middle ground and background issues resolved I then find it easier to find my way around a complicated sketch.

At this stage there are lots of "notes to me" in this sketch - of things that need to further developed and finished later.  For example, I'm using ink to hatch in the beginnings of what will become darker areas.  Plus I'm locating the colours of specific flowers in the border.

Starting to add coloured pencils
pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

4. More Coloured Pencil

One of the main things I do when using coloured pencils is to mix colours and tones on the page.  I don't want the 2D flatness that you get when you use just one colour for an area of colour.

For example, there's about six colours in that roof and about four shades of green in the strip of grass alongside the path.

I'm also constantly tying in colours laid down in one place to colours used elswhere - which adds unity to the development of the sketch

Starting to think about darker tones and variation within 'one colour' areas
pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

5. Where I've got to

The sketch as it stands at the moment (see top) is where I got before "he who must not be bored while I sketch" decided it was time for tea!

It needs finishing.  Everything is a little bit too light.  The light areas need more darks so they'll start to pop. The main thing is that I needed more greens to complete the trees and the hedges.

I'll post the proper sketch when I've finished it.

UPDATE:  Here's the movie of a slideshow of the sketches!

This is how it was made - Sketching slideshow - iPhoto to slideshow to Quicktime Movie

More sketches of Great Dixter

Below there are more sketches of Great Dixter - ordered chronologically.  There's even another sketch of the Long Border!

• The Bird Topiary at Great Dixter 15 Nov 2011
• The Long Border at Great Dixter 28 Jul 2008
• Great Dixter in the Spring 16 Apr 2008
• Great Dixter 29 Aug 2007

More about Great Dixter and gardens

These are some more links which you may find interesting if you like gardens

• Great Dixter - house and gardens, High Park Close, Northiam, Rye, East Sussex, TN31 6PH
• Map of Great Dixter
• Great Dixter - Garden Tour
• Great Dixter - The Long Border
• Twitter account for the Garden's Business Manager
• Great Dixter Facebook Page
• A Year at Dixter - the blog of Maggie Tran is the 2012-13 Christopher Lloyd Scholar at Great Dixter
• Great Dixter - a great garden - information for those wanting to pay an actual or virtual visit
• Gardens in Art - Resources for Artists
• my blog post on Making A Mark about Gardens in Art: Arts and Crafts Gardens #1
• Pastels and Pencils - some of my sketches of gardens and parks in England

Sault and the Lavender Fields of the Nesque

Sault and the Lavender Fields16 ½” x 12”, 29cm x 42cm, pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in
Moleskine A3 size Folio Sketchbook

One very hot day, Sarah and I decided we would go out later afternoon and scout out the Lavender Fields over near Sault.

To get there we took the D1 which skirts around the edge of Mont Ventoux from its western edge to its eastern slopes above Sault.

On the way we came across the Belvedere de la Nesque (on the D1) and found a map of the Lavender Fields in the Nesque Valley.

A map of the Lavender Fields in the valley of the River Nesque
- as seen from the Belvedere de laNesque

The Lavender was getting there but would be better for a few extra days and so we decided to find the best places to paint and then take a trip up over Mont Ventoux via the Route du Ventoux on the way home (of which more in another post) and then come back in a few days time.

The way lavender looks depends on which way round you paint it - so you can EITHER see the rows in which it is planted

Rows of Lavender at Senanque Abbey on 27 June 2012

OR alternatively you are just looking at a sea of lavender.  I preferred the latter since it focus more on the colour and less on the shape.

We found a field some way from Sault which had a good view of the town - and all the other fields of lavender.  D164 - Route du Ventoux - View of Sault & Lavender Fields is the Google Maps location on the Route du Ventoux from which I sketched Sault and the Lavender Fields. [I've started a Painting Places in Provence map so I don't forget where I went to sketch something!]

We returned to this spot on June 25th and sketched and painted in the late afternoon.  I think Sarah produced two paintings in the time it took me to do this sketch! :) I was very struck by the pinky shades which kept coming through - although I guess that might have been the late afternoon / early evening light.

The Pays de Sault website has some other suggestions about Suggested Circuits to View the Lavender

To see a review of the Sketchbook I used for this very large sketch see Making a Mark Reviews: Moleskine Folio Sketchbook - A3 size

More from The Provence Sketchbook (2011)

A Cheshire Garden in Spring - and some new plants

Last year I sketched my mother's garden in early August (see A Cheshire garden in summer and Cosmo weighs up the escape routes). This month I did two sketches.

 The first is of what the same garden looks like in Spring - sketched in the middle of April this year.

Cosmo and the white cat - in A Cheshire Garden in Spring
11.5" x 17", coloured pencils and pen and ink in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

From left to right the garden includes cherry blossom, red tulips, a magnolia, an early clematis plus iris starting in the foreground plus lots and lots of fresh green leaves.

My cats as usual stake out their territory early on.  However Cosmo was rather nonplussed by a white cat who came in the garden and sat down.  Should he chase him off or make friends?  He just sat there and dithered - he's such a woos!

This second sketch is about the plants I bought to go in her front garden which needed a bit of a makeover.  They're all lined up below in the shade waiting to be planted.

I can never remember names - but I do know that there is now a very nice acer now sitting in a pot in the middle of the garden plus there are three David Austin Roses, some iris, a euphorbia and a cornus.  Lots of acid yellow green and red stems and pale yellow/cream/peachy blooms!  Plus some blue greens.  They do say that every green always goes with every other green!

New plants for the front garden
11" x 16", pen and sepia ink in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Walking is still a problem

I'm getting very fed up of being confined to home while I wait for my foot to improve.  The problem is....that it isn't.  While vaguely better, it's a very long way from being OK.  This week I tried a slightly longer walk to see if stretching it might help.

It involved very slow walking and stretching the foot as I went - plus a couple of sit downs and a sketch.  Plus an awful lot of tension because I forget to breathe when I'm walking but think I'm going to fall over any second!  It's as if I'm continuously on the sharp inward yelp which occurs when in pain while forgetting to breathe out.  Almost as if I'm balancing on a tightrope with every stpe.  Very wearing.........

Anenomes in Bow
pen and ink and coloured pencils, 10 x 8" in Large Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Anyway, these are those rather nice dusky purple pink anenomes which never ever come out the right colour when you photograph them - which is a good reason for sketching them!

Sketching Syon Vista

Last week we went to Kew Gardens and I sat on the steps leading up to the Palm House and drew Syon Vista with the new Lavender beds in the foreground.

Syon Vista from the Palm House, Kew Gardens
11.5" x 17", pen ans sepia ink and coloured pencilsin large Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This is my plein air sketch.  I'm really enjoying my large Moleskine sketchbook as a double page spread gives me a good size to work with.  You can see the photos I took while trying to work out the best composition in Kew Gardens 11th August 2010 on Flickr.  I find that using the LCD screen on a digital camera is a really good way of working out a crop for a plein air sketch.  I went for a cropped further version of the second photo.

As always when posting these sketches I end up learning a bit more about the history and heritage of an aspect of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.

Syon Vista is a major feature in the Nesfield/Burton landscape. This part of the Gardens was originally part of Richmond Gardens, but its character is dominated by the 1845 and later design of Nesfield and the Hookers.

The view along the Vista to Syon House across the Thames make this possibly one of the the most visited areas at Kew.
Kew Gardens - History and Heritage

I never knew before today that the Vistas which raidiate out from the Palm House are the work of one man - Willian Nesfield

William Andrews Nesfield (1793-1881)
Nesfield was at first a soldier who later turned to drawing water colours. However, he found his real vocation in landscape design, gaining his first commission in 1836. This was the start of a long flourishing career, working on over 260 estates belonging to the most wealthy and influential people of the day. In 1844, he was asked to re-design the arboretum at Kew. His extensive plans included a number of vistas stemming from the Palm House, a parterre, the remodelling of the formal structure landscape around the Palm House as well as the Palm House Pond. One vista pointed south, called the Pagoda Vista, another facing west towards the Thames was called the Syon Vista. Although eroded in detail by time, Nesfield’s formal structured landscapes surrounding the Palm House, as well as his arboretum design and vistas, have largely kept their structure today.

I've added a "location" to this post but I'm not quite sure how this works in Bloggger - just off to find out.

You can see other sketches from Kew Gardens on this blog and in my Parks and Gardens in London gallery on my website

Columbia Road Market on a Sunday morning

This is what I was doing last Sunday morning - sketching the people, plants and flowers around the stalls in Columbia Road Flower Market just off the Hackney Road, on the borders between Bethnal Green and Shoreditch.

Columbia Road Flower Market
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Every Sunday morning, at 4am a street market starts to be set up in Columbia Road. What's very special about this one is that it totally devoted to plants and flowers. The website has a page devoted to some of the Columbia Road Flower Market traders and what they sell.

Every Sunday for over the last 100 years an array of flower sellers have had pitches on both sides of columbia road. They are specialists in plants, bulbs, trees, herbs and flowers. It is a unique and amazing place and is cheerished by all who visit...
Flickr group - Columbia Road and Flower Market

Columbia Road is also lined with some interesting shops selling all sorts of things, many of them art and craft replated. This is a map which allows you to locate individual shops and galleries.

The shop exteriors are certainly more interesting than many seen in a modern shopping street - it's one of the few streets I know in Tower Hamlets which still has old shop fronts - complete with shutters. See their background on their Twitter page to see what I mean. Which means it's a great place to sketch even when there isn't a flower market!

The Columbia Road Shops and Flower Market also have a Flickr group - and I need to get my photos uploaded so I can join it!

I find it ironic that I am writing this post at a time when I'm also spending a vast amount of my time working on a representation to Tower Hamlets Council explaining why their ideas about development and regeneration don't accord with those of the local population in the area where I live. This particular market would have been obliterated if the Planners had got their way! Now it is famous all over the UK (it gets featured on television programmes) as being a wonderful place to buy good quality plants and flowers at very reasonable prices. People come from all over London to visit it - although it's not the easiest place to get to (how to get to Columbia Road)!

The whole area went into a decline in the 1970’s. Indeed demolition was mooted, but the locals fought back and the area and market were saved.

Since the 1980’s the market has grown into one of international repute. Today a wide range of unusual shops complement it, turning the whole area into one of the most interesting shopping experiences to be had anywhere.
History of Columbia Road

"A big armful of sunflowers for a fiver!"
(the constant refrain to this sketch while I stood next to the chap holding the bunch of sunflowers)
10" x 8", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've included a sketch where the coloured pencil work is less developed (mainly because this was a standing sketch and the disability in my feet dictates a strict limit on how long I can stand still).

This shows a bit more of the sort of pen and sepia ink structure which frequently underpins my sketches. I have two methods with pen and ink. One is mapping out the shapes and line design of a sketch - as in this one - and the other is a more definitive pen and ink sketch (as in my recent sketch Sunday afternoon in the Jardin des Plantes)

Tips for those wanting to sketch in Columbia Road Market

• it's exceptionally crowded from when it opens to when it close; the bulk of visitors arrive in the morning.
  
• sketching from either end gives you a view of the market without getting in people's way
• standing inbetween stalls means you're out of the traffic flow either side of the stalls and should be OK so long as you don't take up permanent residence!
  
• look for spots where a stall holder hasn't turned up where you sit on a stool without getting in anybody's way
• make sure you leave space for people to get around you
• try getting there very early or late when the crowds are thinner on the ground!
• or visiting in the week when you can see the shp fronts more easily.
• come with a big bag if visiting on a Sunday as you won't be able to resist either plants or flowers!
  

While being green and using public transport is a good thing, getting home with masses of flowers and/or a six foot banana tree can be really rather difficult. The good news is that there is now a new car park for 200 cars in Haggerston School playground off northside of Hackney Rd.

PS Sketches from my travels with a skdtchbook in France return soon - it's just I need to get a bit more work done on the content of the posts - including links to my videos!

Links:

• Columbia Road Market - official website
• Columbia Road Flower Market
• Columbia Road shops
• History of Columbia Road Market
  
• how to get to Columbia Road - plus a map of how to find the car parking space for 200 cars at Haggerston School
  

Beschorneria yuccoides

Beschorneria yuccoides and a Yucca
11.5" x 17", pencil and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Do you know how long it took me to identify this plant? Do you know how completely unhelpful the RHS website is at identifying and providing images of plants in its own gardens? Can you tell I got more than a bit frustrated while trying to identify this plant? That will teach me to forget to photograph the name plate of the plant I'm drawing!!!

After nearly an hour of searching on the web and trying out various search terms and plant directories, Ifinally came up with Beschorneria yuccoides - confirmed by the Cambridge Botanic Garden and this site - Cool Tropical Plants which was the most helpful in terms of telling me what it is and how to look after it in layman's terms.

Anyway - it's a very spectacular plant and I found it on Weather Hill at Wisley, just near the top entrance to the Vegetable Garden. They've got about 3 or 4 growing up there and it was very spectacular at the end of May when we visited Wisley on that hot bank holiday weekend.

I'm toying with doing this one as a formal drawing for next years botanical artists exhibition. You may see it again!

Sketchercise and gardens - I find that visiting large gardens is a really great way to combine walking with sketching - and the bigger the garden the more walking gets done. RHS Wisley is a fabulous garden from this perspective. However I wasn't too keen on the bit where I couldn't get reception on my mobile phone so I could ring "he who must not bored while I sketch" who was having a very nice time sat next to the lake with the Sunday papers. I had to scoot all the way down the hill and across the stream and across seven acres to tell him that we needed to reschedule the planned meet-up....and then had to scoot all the way back up the hill again to get back to my spot for drawing these plants. But I just kept thinking about how it was probably doing me the world of good!

Sketchercise on 31st May 2009: 7,409 steps and 3.5 miles

Gordon drives Dome Valley Arizona - with "the boss"

Gordon took over the driving as we left Yuma and became a captive model for my next sketch! Apparently the likeness is fairly good. It was not too difficult to sketch him as Interstate 8 through the Sonoran Desert is very largely a straight road so he didn't move much! ;)

8.00am Gordon drives Dome Valley, Arizona - listening to Bruce Springsteen
pen and ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Sketching is an activity which I can highly recommend for passengers on a long trip who'd like to practice their skills at sketching people. The trick is to hold the pen fairly lightly. Let it skip over the page and don't mind too much if you hit a bump - it only adds authenticity to the sketch! ;)

"The boss" in this instance is Bruce Springsteen who started playing just as I began to title the piece. Louise's husband had lent us his satellite radio as reception on normal radio stations in the desert can be very patchy. Gordon managed to work out how the radio worked and then kept us tuned to a radio station which played a lot of Jimmy Buffet for most of the journey. Everybody was amazed I'd never heard of him......

Once we passed Yuma and the Fortuna Foothills we were driving through Dome Valley - very near to the trail of the old Butterfield stage coaches which carried both mail and passengers in the nineteenth century.  In effect we were travelling eastbound along the I-8 but very near to their Butterfield Division 3 route between Fort Yuma and Tucson (click the link to check out the old stagecoach stops on this route)

The schedule was very specific. The westbound stage was scheduled to leave Tucson, Arizona, for instance, every Tuesday and Friday at 1:30pm, arriving at Ft. Yuma, California three days later at 3am.National Postal Museum - Butterfield Overland Mail Record Book

After a while I began to realise that there was an opportunity to sketch The Sand Tank Mountains south of I-8 (located within the Sonoran Desert National Monument) from the car because the view is the same for mile after mile so accuracy in terms of what you can see from an exact spot becomes rather redundant and it's also easier to get a good sense of the place.

Although everything in the desert landscape looks really washed out at first, the desert colours in the desert are actually quite complex and quite unlike any other landscape. I found that I could see more and more colours the more I looked at it - which then became reflected in the coloured pencil work where I was trying for an optical mixing effect.

Thus the next sketch (pen and ink and coloured pencil in my Moleskine travel sketchbook) is a composite of the desert landscape we were passing. The hills come from one bit of the road, the sky from another and the shapes of cacti in the Saguaro Cactus Forests were filled in as we passd them.

Composite Sketch of The Sand Tank Mountains
sketched from the car driving along Interstate 8
pen and ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Saguero Cactus at San Xavier du Bac
- this was a BIG one!

The large cacti in the sketch of this particular part of the Lower Sonoran Desert are called Saguaro Cactus (see left for one I photographed at the Mission) and there are a number of Saguaero Cactus Forests in the area.

Ocatillo in Arizona - this is not a cactus

 The other main vegetation we saw everywhere on this part of the trip is called the Ocotillo - and it's not a cactus, its a shrub. Below is a photo of what an ocotillo looks like close up.

One of the main features of the trip that day were the cloud formations. We had great big cumulus clouds initially over the various mountain ranges in the distance and then just before we turned right on to Interstate 10 Louise and I both spotted an anvil cloud - which usually means there's a storm hovering somewhere in the vicinity.

We drove past Tucson heading for San Xavier du Bac Mission on its outskirts The history of this church is explained in the history section of its website.

In outline, the first church foundations were built in 1700 and the present church was built between 1783 and 1797. It's suggested to be one of the very finest examples of Mission architecture given the blending of various styles and the dazzling ornamentation and colour of the interior.

Storm clouds gathering at San Xavier du Bac Mission

It was incredibly hot and humid while we were there. As we began to leave we could not help but notice that there was a dramatic change in the sky - the storm clouds were gathering.

As we started the next leg of the journey to Tombstone the rain started - and it 'bucketed down' I feel it necessary to point out that I announced that this was nothing to do with me ;) as England currently has a ban on the use of hose pipe due to a lack of rain. I felt it much more likely that it had something to do with the man from Maine (and by the end of the trip I was calling him the 'rainmaker'). Two weeks later the area we were moving through had some really bad summer flash floods.

Then we arrived in Tombstone, home of the OK Corral........

Location Links:

• Yuma, Arizona 
• Desert USA - Sonoran Desert
• Map of the Sonoran Desert
• Butterfield Statge - Stagecoach Service in the 1860s is a bit of a contrast to today's travel