Painter's diary

A decaying winter horse chestnut leaf in graphite.

I have just finished painting this sprig of holly, just in time to use it as an image for some Christmas cards.

Here is another autumn painting, this time of hawthorn. The hawthorn was thick with berries this year which is usually the sign of a cold winter. Another painting is in progress of black bryony which was also abundant this year but winter is now almost upon us so I will turn to more wintery subjects soon.

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.