New paintings and regular art updates.
Fushia plant in a hanging basket, reaching up to the sky. My Fushias seem to last through the winter (you can buy standard Fushias that can be grown as hedging plants) I love the way the buds swell and their petal skirts swirl out, some are called ballerina among other varieties. I love the mixes of colour you get from pale pinks to dee magenta. The shapes from plain petals to billowing folds. You can get all sorts of flowers for summer but Fushias are at the top of my list.
I ccan’t remember if I’ve already blogged about this. It’s based on the flowers in our garden a few years ago. I took some photos and put the images together to create this. I’ve had a few problems posting this morning, so sorry the text has appeared after I posted the photo…
This was a quick painting I did years ago. Experimenting with a wax drawing then watercolour over the top. The picture has a reflection on it because it is in a cli frame under glass. I think I added the cat later on a piece of paper that I cut out and stuck down. It’s lasted quite well as it was done in 1990!
I’m still waiting, on the 3rd November, for my hanging baskets to get knocked off by the frost. October was the fifth wettest since the 19th century. And it was wet, and windy. A couple of ex hurricanes blew over us, the sky stayed battleship grey for a lot of the month. The wind makes our windows whistle and moan in the kitchen if its from the South West, and the noise moves to the front of the house if the wind shifts to the North East. That’s why the plants do well round the back, they are in a little sheltered micro climate. So I’m waiting to see what happens tomorrow… And not just in the garden!
On my walk yesterday I saw two lots of snapdragon still flowering the and some pale pink ones next to them. These are summer flowers, usually gone by now. Thus was up a high hill, at the side of the pavement next to the road. Impressive survival skills.
My hanging baskets are still surviving and if they haven’t flopped after the cold tonight I will take some more photos of them. They can’t last much longer. Soon the leaves will be gone and the flowers will be dead. Let’s hope they last a while longer.
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Painting, acrylic on canvas, from about three years ago. This is loosly based on the yin yang symbol. The blue is for water, the canal runs next to a lot of potbank, it was used to transport pottery around the country. The flowers are meant to represent canal Roses. They were a design that was used on metal objects on canal barges, like pots and tin watering cans and jugs. They are also painted directly onto the barges as decoration. The potbank shape curves round and is sometimes held in place by metal bands.
This is a duplicated photo of the orchids in my window. I thought they were hard to grow, but they seem to thrive on the neglect they get from me. I generally just give them a bit of water once a week. I think you are supposed to mist them with water and give them orchid food but that doesn’t happen. I did try repotting them but I killed one because I didn’t know they like clear pots so the roots get light. Some of the roots are ariel ones that need to be allowed freedom from the pot. One of my plants has sent out two flower spikes since I got it. I’m hoping it will do it again.
It was hailing earlier, then a great shower of rain and then the sun came out. That sort of weather when it doesn’t know what it’s doing… Leaves are still on the plants and flowers too. Mainly because it’s been cloudy at night, keeping the heat in a bit. The lowest temperature I’ve seen was about 5.2°C in the middle of the night.
My hanging baskets are looking a bit bedraggled but we will see what happens over the next few days. Life cycles round, winter arrives later every year…
Chimney pots outside Cherished Chimneys in Longport, Stoke-on-Trent during Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent’s national sketching weekend in the Summer of 2019. So many shapes and sizes. We bought a couple as planters and filled them full of summer flowers. They make a terrific display because it raises the plants up above the ground. It’s also a good reuse of an object that might otherwise get smashed and used for hard-core on a building site.
Sunflower silhouetted in the bright sunlight of an aurumn day.
From am original photograph taken at Trentham Gardens in 2019. Edited in the Layout app that works with Instagram and Facebook.
Floating in the air, defying gravity.
