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Capturing the colours of nature
Capturing the colours of nature15-Jul-2020 12:11
After all the excitement around the media attention last month, this month has started with broken hands and dragging myself out of bed in the mornings.
There's only so much time your body can run on adrenaline before it says enough.
So what's with the broken hands? OK, they're not really broken, they just feel like it (having broken my ankle and toes a few years ago, believe me, I know).
Anyway, how? why? I hear you ask.
Well with all that Spring abundance brought on by the unprecedented rains, we're still doing a major ‘editing' job around the earthship and feeding the bunce to the sheep and donkey.
My little secatures are fine for small jobs, but on this scale and 3 hours worth every day for a month? They make you feel like you've broken your hands (curiously my little fingers have suffered the worst).
But there has been one huge benefit - getting up close and personal with nature's palette.
Looking beyond our firebreak garden to the nature reserve around us I see broad sweeps of colour - the green, yellow and purples of Spring have now turned to burnt sienna with bleached out powder blue skies. The morning sun turns it to 18ct gold, the line between soft grey night and cool pink day still visible.
I tell you, if I was a sturdier artist I'd be out there at the crack of dawn each day trying to capture that fleeting moment.
But let's be honest, I'm not and there's all that fodder clearing to do at dawn.
As an artist trying to capture the essence of this changing landscape with it's huge variety of flora and fauna it can be overwhelming!
So how do I do it?
One of my go to methods for downloading all that inspiration is to keep sketch books.
I'm always learning and trying to improve my understanding of nature alongside my art.
Doing sketches of the elements of nature that inspire me - bees, bugs, birds, plants, flowers, sweeps of landscape, helps me learn more about their shapes, structure and colours.
And nature can be really out there with it's colour combinations - turquoise to green to yellow stalk and burnt sienna dried flower heads, who'd have thought of that?!
And then I see it repeated in the Oscillated Lizard (below).
Oscillated Lizard shedding it's skin |
Lavender Bee |
I love these! xx
Thank you so much Becca! xxx
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