garden

poured paint on canvas

Collage--doodle garden

pencil colored illustration

Garden Sketch, Houston TX

I love gardens! I was recently at the opening of the Abbey Millennium Garden so thought I would produce a piece of work celebrating the new garden.

Poppies are among my favorite flowers---vibrant AND delicate. Great swaths of "bread poppies" garnish our garden. We harvest seeds for lemon-seed cake and poppy-seed rolls. (No, we don't harvest that other stuff.) They reseed generously and we have beautiful crops of red and purple flowers each year. I've been working on this colored pencil drawing for the past week. Enclosed are some images of the progress over that time.

on paper

At thre end of a perfect afternoon, some olives and rosé in the garden. pen, ink and colored pencil on paper

Using my husband's garden as an inspiration, I love to make up containers and plants.

The influence of the moon, drawn and painted with gouache and digitally retouched

Today we at Schmancy Mansion allowed our servants outside to romp. Our butler smelled the flowers and befriended a fox. Our nanny calmed her nerves in the garden. It was fine for them, we suppose, but now they have to get back to work.

Spottis picking munpuffs and glorbs in his garden

I don't normally paint trees. So I was surprised when my daily doodling produced this loose interpretation of the tree in my garden. I quite like it. Doodles are magical.

Here is a sketch that I made while sitting in the garden the other day. Made with Micron pens on Guarro paper, 6x9 inches.

Freehand drawing with pens made during a live drawing session.

Greenhouse

Annuals are encouraged to seed in the less formal beds in our large garden. We tend them, photograph them, and I draw and paint them. This is a colored pencil (Prismacolor) drawing of one of our seedling poppies. It was an odd form. Not exactly a single, nor a double and lacked the common cross markings in the throat.

I took my drawings out into the wild for some glamour shots. I got busted crawling through a flower garden doing so, but the woman was fine with it. I gave her this bunny.

25” x 20” acrylic

Daily sketch , while sitting in from of a fresh mint growing in a lovely vintage bucket.

20” x 10” acrylic

"Sorry, friends, but I'm gonna go explore the world. Bye."

Oil on Lake Ontario Rocks

You hear a whispered "hello" coming from your flowers.

Narwhals in the forest…

I am delighted to share that I Am a Dragon! has been named to the Pennsylvania Center for the Book's 2024 Baker's Dozen: Thirteen Best Books for Family Literacy! Here is the list ( I am in such a good company!): - “10 Dogs” by Emily Gravett - “ABC and You and Me” by Corinna Luyken - “Bear with Me” illustrated by Kerascoët, Sebastien Cosset and Marie Pommepuy, - “The Concrete Garden” by Bob Graham - “How to Count to ONE (And Don't Even THINK About Bigger Numbers!)” by Caspar Salmon and illustrated by Matt Hunt - “I Am a Dragon! A Squabble and a Quibble” by Sabina Hahn, published by HarperCollins. - “If I Was a Horse” by Sophie Blackall - “The Kitten Story” by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by Brittany Cicchese - “Mr. S” by Monica Arnaldo - “Night in the City” by Julie Downing - “Ruffles and the Cozy, Cozy Bed” by David Melling - “Simon and the Better Bone” by Corey R. Tabor - “You Go First” by Ariel Bernstein and illustrated by Marc Rosenthal