Fresh Flowers From The Garden

Spring and summer can be overwhelming. It seems that color is exploding everywhere and there's just not enough time to really capture and enjoy all of it so often the best I can hope for is to shoot a lot of photos to draw or paint from in the winter.

I'm never quite sure what sorts of backgrounds to photograph them against. If I could create just the right mood in a picture there's be no reason to bother drawing or painting them. Maybe at this point in my career that's actually a good thing. It keeps my brushes and pencils busy and the paint flowing.

I didn't know what to do with these but they were fun to look at, weren't they?

Front Yard Tulips

  It doesn't look like much yet but these tulips mark what will be the front edge of the garden.

For the summer we've planted a few sunflowers in between the bunches of tulips and other flowers. It helps fill us the yard and the birds really enjoy them.

We had a lot of fun cutting and arranging the tulips today and plan to draw and paint them tomorrow.

The Red tulips came out of the rose bed on the other end of the yard and I put them with the purple to send to my favorite red hat lady.

We're still trying to move the red tulips which years ago became tangled up in the rosebushes. For now we're just content to cut any of the flowers that bloom and enjoy them in bouquets.

The Front Garden

There are birds living in 2 of the birdhouses on the arbor and there seem to be babies in one of them so it's fun to watch all of the activity there and listen to them.

One of the things the birds seen to like is having a pool by the house and an assortment of feeders a few feet away.

I transplanted some of the violets from the backyard and love the fact that they came from a grandma over 30 years ago and have been taken along wherever we go ever since.

 Here are a few of my new favorite tulips.

Quite a contrast to the old ones which remain tangled in the rosebushes. That's been going on for 12 years now and I never quite get them all dug up and sorted out.

New Tulips

I planted these last fall and am really excited to have something new in the garden this year.

 I thought these were going to be a darker pink and a bit bigger. it's always hard to tell what you're going to get when you order from a catalog. Very few things really look like the photos or live up to the descriptions.

Don't get the idea that I don't appreciate them. It's been such a very long and dreary winter that I'm happy to see ANY color in the garden.

It may be that they didn't get enough sun where I'd planted them so I plan to move them for next season.

Remembering Spring Tulips

With all of the snow and below zero temps around the country right now I thought it might be nice to remind ourselves of what we've got to look forward to in the next few months.

I'm looking forward to getting back to my little tea table out in the front yard. it's my favorite place to watch the world go by as I enjoy the garden.

When these tulips open all the way they're often mistaken for poppies. Especially when I try to paint them in acrylics from photos.

The latest Tulip photos

It's hard to believe that there were only a few of  these were blooming yesterday, they sure go fast.

I wonder how long I'll have to get these painted before the petals drop?

It was a bit too sunny to work here this morning so I'll get to it as soon as the light shifts this afternoon.

 I also discovered a couple of tiny tulips in a darker shade of red out behind the woodpile. I'll get photos and work with those later.

A tangled mess with roses and tulips

I've been trying for years to get these plants apart but there's a lot more to do. I try to save all of the plants and move them to better locations but it looks like I'll have to try an approach that's as aggressive as these plants are in order to solve the problem.

More work on the tulip painting

Because of all of the other projects that I've got going on these days it's taken me nearly a month to get back to this painting.

 I've got Iris, wildflowers and roses blooming right now but don't feel ready to work with them until I've finished with the tulips. I prefer working with fresh, live flowers but I can't get the tulips out of my mind so I'll slip back into it a while and see where it goes before I get back to the garden.

 Once the painting is out of the way the photos will become art supplies and will get cut up to decorate mail and "play" with.

I also stick a couple of the inspiration photos to the back of my paintings to
document the evolution of the piece.

Tulips and lilacs

I'm glad I shot these pictures yesterday because the weather is wet and overcast today. The season is short here so when the sun comes out, I do too.

Frost and Freeze Warnings

Over night low temps just over 20 degrees F mean there's not much going on in the garden today. It's up to 32 degrees now but the closest I'm getting to my plants is to go through garden photos and do a bit of drawing and painting.

 I thought I'd better toss this one in the scanner quick before I write a letter on it and drop it in the mail.

The interesting thing about this project is that it gave me a chance to try an assortment of pencils and pens as well as figuring out the amount of pressure I wanted to use on them without committing myself to doing a whole drawing.


What's so great about it? The aunt and uncle I'm writing to like to see the the way I work so this will make us all happy instead of just sitting in my sketchbook.

I keep very little of my work, it's much more fun to send it out into the world and see what becomes of it.

I'd love to hear some of your opinions on the subject so be sure to comment or at least check one of the boxes to let me know what you think.

Some ideas don't make the cut

 I'd grown tired of the background on this watercolor so I decided to remove it.

 I thought I'd try combining these flowers with one of my other paintings.

 This is a detail of a recent watercolor

I wanted to see how these looked together so it's a good thing I'd just tossed them loose into the scanner because I didn't like it. 

Watercolor Tulips from Garden Photos