Rose Hips

My goodness - so, so long since I posted here.

I've been doing some sketching recently, inspired by a couple of online courses courtesy of Sketchbook Skool and Jane LaFazio. Trying to find my 'style' so experimenting a lot.

This is a study of rose hips from my garden in part coloured, part left just ink sketch. I once saw a book of sketches by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect and designer who died in the early 20th century, and it contained some beautiful sketches of flowers in ink, only partly coloured and I fell in love with them. I even translated one of them into an embroidery years ago but where that is now I can't think. I'll have to see if I can find it although I suspect it wasn't stored properly and has suffered for it.

Metamorphosis

I left a couple of my leeks in the ground when I noticed they'd started to develop seed heads. I just had to see how they were going turn out.

And this is what happened - isn't it beautiful! I'm not sure what will happen next but I'll make sure to photograph it.

Cobwebs

Early morning cobwebs

Cobwebs caught early in the morning with the dew still on them

dried hydrangea

I took this when I was on holiday in Cornwall earlier this year. It was in the house we rented and it appealed to my love of dead things! It's a dried hydrangea which has faded to a beautiful soft creamy colour - I didn't tamper with the colour after photographing it at all. It sat on a window sill in the conservatory and was getting lots of light through it, giving it an ethereal look.

I've been dealing with disappointment at missing Kat's upcoming visit to the UK in October. She's holding a couple of on-location workshops and I'm going to miss both of them because I'll be away on holiday. But it's reminded me that I haven't picked up my camera enough lately and I need to do so. It's a bit like an itch that needs scratching. But I'm a little sick of taking photos of flowers, much though I love them. It's an easy non-challenging thing to do for me - a bit formulaic, and I really want to move on to other subjects. I've recently been inspired by the blog of Nichole Robertson and her beautiful book, Paris in Colour and I think I might take her idea of choosing a colour and photographing a wide range of subjects in that colour and see if I can make it work for me. It will give me focus (no pun intended!) without tying me down to a specific subject. And getting myself out of my comfort zone will encourage me to find out how to solve the problems that come with different types of photography. 

roses

This is one of my favourite roses in the garden. It has the most amazing scent and grows in a pot near my back door. This year it's grown one long stalk to a huge height which makes it difficult to support and it's very vulnerable. I don't think it's going to survive my husband's hedge cutting exercise this weekend!

I held back from posting this until today - the rose did survive!!

montbretia

I love these. They don't last long and they're quite invasive but those flame coloured flowers are just gorgeous.

spires

My very own Olympic torches!

bamboo

A few days ago, before winter returned (!), I sat in the garden with a cup of coffee and sketched the bamboo. I'm not sure what type of bamboo it is but mine grows in a pot and at this time of year the colour of the leaves ranges from golden brown to palest green and it has tiny red fruits.

Painted with my lovely M. Graham watercolours (one of the ingredients is honey so I may try them on toast later :-)

first flowers

I took my camera into the garden this afternoon

             

Look who came visiting while I was photographing the foxglove!

the name escapes me!

I know what this flower is because I have lots in the garden - they seed themselves everywhere. I have these pink ones and some blue ones but I can't for the life of me remember what they're called. I'm sure it will come to me eventually so I won't agonize over it!

chives

How wonderful it is to be able to go outside with my camera with no fear of it getting drenched in the rain. I wandered round the garden in the sunshine and found lots of new growth to photograph. These chives are so delicate, balancing at the top of their sinuous stems.

black and white

How I love black & white photos!

happy new year!

I love this rose hip with its long tendrils and sharp spikes. Oh, how I wish I'd removed the dead piece of stem before I photographed it though.

JAPONICA FLOWER

This is the flower of a large plant I have in my garden which I believe is some sort of a Japonica. The flower is huge and in all the years I've had it I've only seen it flower a couple of times. This time I had my camera ready!

ROSE HIP

Such a lovely, healthy looking rose hip. Won't be long though before it becomes one of my beautiful dead things!

SYMMETRY

I can't believe how symmetrical this group of roses on a single stem is. Unfortunately they now reside in a vase on my mantelpiece because a squirrel jumped onto the birdhouse above the pot where the rose is, the birdhouse came unscrewed from its fixing and fell on the rose below, and the stem was knocked off the plant!!

HYDRANGEA PETIOLARIS 2

HYDRANGEA PETIOLARIS

GERBERA 2