What you don't see in this picture, apart from the photographer (Mrs.C) creeping around at my back, is Leo hiding under his favourite dark red bush ready to pounce on any tweety-birdies who happen to hop by. Oh, aye, and for the length of time I was sitting there making a whole bunch of studies my feet had taken root!
Pastels on Ingres paper, 30x23cm: "Poppy 1"; as the title suggests this was the first study made that day of these big flappy petals. And no sooner had I photographed the painting and uploaded it onto my Etsy site than a lady from Australia purchased it because her little baby daughter is also called Poppy!
Pastels on Ingres paper, 30x23cm: "Poppy 2"; I never tire of painting these flower-heads; they are so exhuberant and joyful and the way the petals flap about in the breeze there are endless permutations of how it looks. There were many more studies but I don't want to become boring talking about it, so I'll move on to my favourite Clematis:
Pastels on Ingres paper, 22x15cm: "The President"; That's the common name for a very uncommon and spectacular flower. I love it for it's dark, dark, purple/blue colouring - about the deepest shade I know in this variety of climber.
Finally while all this colour is rioting over on one side of the garden the Rhododendrons are quietly getting on with their own thing. This one in particular once was a hybrid variety with bright crimson flowers but over the years has grown much bigger and "reverted" to it's more natural state:
Pastels on Ingres paper, 30x23cm: "Reverted Rhoddy"; Even with it's 'cooler' colours when seen en masse when you look right into the uppermost petal it has this bright orange flash with darker spotted reds and scarlet stamen. So it's not really that shy after all!
