Day 25, urban sketchers challenge. Suddenly the blossom has burst in the garden, where there were buds a couple of days ago, now tiny pinky white flowers are sprouting out of the branches and twigs. I’ve seen and heard a very loud bumble bee, and also worker bees and hover flies. Hopefully they will do their job of pollinating the blossom and we will have cherries and pears and plums as the summer progresses.

The garden was hard to draw because of all the details. I can get the branches approximately right, then adding leaves and blossom complicates things. Distinguishing between leaf shapes and colours for instance.

I used two thicknesses of black unipin pens, fine line water and fade proof pigment ink (0.5 and 0.8). I also used a Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen black 199*** S size. Then I shaded in with a 3B graphite pencil and a charcoal pencil. I would have liked to add some dabs of colour, but I think the overall effect is quite good. I’ve taken a picture and used a black and white filter because I took the photo under electric light and one corner, a bit turned up, was reflecting back quite a bright yellow.

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