Author: Debbie Craddock

Last weekend I attended another course at West Dean College entitled Structure Form and Texture with Amber Halsall, a well known botanical artist. I chose the course because it included some natural history subjects that I was keen to paint.
It was a glorious weekend with the gardens full of spring flowers.
I chose to paint shells which I discovered were as complex to paint as botanical subjects!
I have include a page from my sketch book as it shows the exercises in illustrating texture (willow), form (shell and quails egg) and structure (scales from a cone).
Below this is the finished shell painting.

In November we went on a guided mushroom walk at Polesden Lacey led by a fungi expert and identified many mushrooms in the ancient woodland there. The walk inspired me to draw some of the mushrooms in pen and ink. An artist I follow makes handmade books and I decided to mount the drawings along with illustrations of other autumn subjects in my own handmade book. The project took almost 3 months to complete. The book is made from thin card and the drawings are mounted on thick Lokta paper which is made from the bark of the Lokta bush in the Himalayas and gives a textured autumnal background to the drawings. The colourful leaves were painted and cut out from thinner lokta paper which gives them a natural quality. The cover is made from oil board.
The book can be opened like a concertina to display all the images together or used as a traditional book.

I hope you enjoy watching the video of the book: please click on this link.

A painting from earlier in the year. Bulbs left to right: daffodil, hyacinth, tulip . The hyacinth was very interesting to paint as it had so many different textures.

I spotted this squash outside the greengrocers in October and thought it would make a good subject because of the bright colours and patterns. It turned out to be very complex to paint because of following the structure and patterns accurately. After three attempts this the finished version.

A painting from late summer combining field bindweed growing up fences at Pachesham and a birch branch found on Albury Heath.

On Sunday 11th November I will be attending Flittons Garden Centre Craft Fair from 11-4pm. These are some of the original painting cards I will be selling along with printed cards from my paintings and small original framed and unframed paintings.

I picked up this oak leaf while walking in the gardens at West Dean in July. When held up to the light it had amazing colours despite just looking brown.

This is a painting of Clematis Lady Northcliffe which I purchased in the spring. It flowered early in the year and is now flowering again.