Category: Paintings

I love autumn as there is so much to paint. I found these sycamore seeds on Albury Heath.

Here is a painting I am working on of a Swiss flower meadow. The plants were drawn on a trip to Switzerland in June. The flower meadows were stunning and went on for miles. The meadows attracted a huge amount of insect life and butterflies.

I quite like drawing dead plants because there is no rush to finish them before they die. This teazel was picked near Epsom Downs on a walk at the end of last Autumn and I have been working on it in spare moments since then. The picture below shows part of the full drawing. The full picture can be seen on the website on the 2014 page.

The drawing below is of a Parinari Nonda. One of a number of plants grown in the Northern territories of Australia to restore mine sites.

It was drawn as part of a group project by North Downs Botanical Artists to illustrate plants that restore. Kew Gardens provided dried specimens for us to draw from as the plants are not readily available in this country. We hope that the 6 paintings that were produced will be displayed at Kew later this year and all six can be seen at
http://www.maryalbanese.com/id133.html

On 3rd April I attended a workshop with Anna Mason in Cranleigh. We painted a parrot tulip from a photograph. We worked from dark to light and this was a challenge as I usually always do the light tones first and build up to the darkest. We learned a lot about looking for the contrasting tones in the flower which give a painting it’s 3D effect. Here is the result.

Good news today…..the Larch Cones and the Winter Beetroot, both shown in previous posts have been accepted for the Society of Botanical Artists exhibition which is held in London in May. For more information visit http://www.soc-botanical-artists.org/

This exhibition is very competitive to get into so I am really delighted to have 2 works accepted this year .

There’s always something interesting to paint even at the end of winter before the spring flowers arrive. I was inspired by this silver birch branch that I picked up on Albury Heath in January. Having enjoyed painting the butterfly in the bramble painting below I decided to do another to bring some life to this little painting.

Sold this week (19th May) at the Sutton Arts Network exhibition .

Today I collected the drawing below from the framing shop. I decided to invest in professional framing as I could not find a ready made frame in a light wood which I though would enhance the drawing. It is destined for an exhibition in London and I will not know until the end of March if it has been accepted. The larch cones were very difficult to draw and took numerous attempts but I am pleased with the final result and the composition. Sold at the ‘Society of Botanical Artists’ exhibition in Westminster !