Gardens Illustrated illustrations 2017 ... part 2

Here is my round-up of the linocut illustrations for Frank Ronan's monthly column in Gardens Illustrated magazine for July to December 2017 (the illustrations for January to June can be found here).

Frank's June column left him returning home after a few years living in California ... 

"The joy of being back in my own garden is overwhelming at times."

During 2016 Frank's writing had taken on a gloomy tone, so I was relieved he was happy and and back among plants he loves ... and I love too.

July 2017

Frank's garden has been left to grow wild and he's unsure what to tackle first. He decides that a large fir tree ... a Christmas tree someone planted out in the 1950s ... now dwarves the cottage and has to go; his decision made because he loves pruning things, climbing trees and using a chain saw. The fir tree's trunk already has a Clematis montana growing up it, so Frank leaves a 15 ft stump as its support. Our garden wall also has a C. montana ... and as it was May it was in flower  (I work about 2 months ahead of publication), so I could enjoy sketching from life. This isn't always possible but I prefer drawing from real live plants.

August 2017

This year I often had a very small window when I could work on the 'Frank' illustrations; the August Frank arrived in late May and I sat at my desk and carefully read and re-read Frank's words on Monday 5 June ... 2 days after the London Bridge attack, the 3rd terrorist attack in a only a few weeks last summer. Frank's essay on the subject of forgiveness, contentment and happiness was poignant and perfectly timed ... I may have cried (which doesn't happen often). If you have a copy of the the magazine or can get the online version, I recommend it as something to keep at hand if times get tough.

The editor suggested I include a Goldfinch in the composition, they are frequent visitors to our garden and one of my favourite birds, so along with grasses I sketched from life this became the image to illustrate Frank's words ...

"Happiness is no right, but an elusive privilege ... If you chase it, it will run ... The stiller you are the more it will linger. Any attempt to run after it and capture it, or even too direct a stare, and it will flit off like a goldfinch startled."

September 2017

More happy coincidences for September's Frank, the subject is meadows and I'd just spent a fascinating day visiting one and doing lots of sketches. Frank had been reading a book, 'Grass-fed Nation' by Roger Harvey, the agricultural adviser for 'The Archers' ... which is often on the radio as I work ... so I'm familiar with 'herbal leys'.

Frank discovers that his neglected garden borders ... now overgrown with a thatch of grasses, wildflowers and self-seeded perennials related to meadow plants ... are thriving! He muses about a new kind of garden border that is more like a meadow. Now, that sounds lovely, just my kind of thing too, Knapweeds, Burnets and Geraniums mingled in drifts of meadow grasses ... something butterflies would enjoy too.

October 2017

Autumn flowering bulbs is the subject of the October 'Frank', all those lovely sugar-almond pink flowers that surprise the garden with their clean sharp colour among the decaying leaves of autumn.
I chose to illustrate the Nerines and Cyclamen (Frank includes Colchicums too, but I decided they would overload the illustration). I included the toad that Frank says looks like a Cyclamen corm, and the drifts of Cyclamen are based on those at Anglesey Abbey which have a special memory for me.
I like his idea of planting Nerines in pots ... so this is a visual reminder to do that too.

November 2017

Apple trees and garden bonfires ... two more things I can draw from life and from personal experience. Frank is writing about how picking fruit and having a bonfire are great ways to get friends to 'help' in the garden. This was a lovely Autumnal subject and and excuse to carve decorative patterns to depict the flames and smoke.

December 2017

The December issue of Gardens Illustrated includes a lovely new series of articles by Lia Leendertz on identifying trees, part 1 covers Deciduous Native British Trees. To continue the 'tree theme', Frank writes about Ash trees at a time when time may be running out as they succumb to Ash Die-Back. The Ash tree I sketched for this illustration is one I can see from our vegetable plot, it stands on the bank of the brook in the neighbour's garden, and has a twin trunk which joins to make an opening big enough for a child for small person to squeeze through.
I've got used to spotting obscure literary references in Frank's writing, this month he makes a passing reference to Tennyson referring to the Ash tree's 'coal black buds in March' ... it took a request on Twitter for someone to point me to 'The Gardener's Daughter', so I thought a 2017 gardener's daughter should appear in the picture ... with her cat. The door in the garden wall is based on the one in my garden ... although I've played around with the scale and made the tree huge and the wall more extensive and further away.
A few more changes from the usual ... I worked slightly larger and inked the block in various shades of brown and dark grey. The red of the gardener's daughter's coat was added digitally after scanning the print (if I print an edition, I'll cut a special block to print the red).

So that's almost another year of prints complete ... there's one more, I'll tell you about the linocut for the Special 'Plants Edition' before the New Year.

Meanwhile, wishing you a calm run-up to the Christmas weekend. 

Cheers!

Celia

xx

Gardens Illustrated illustrations 2017 round up ... part 1

Times change and these days you'll mainly find me on Instagram or Twitter rather than keeping this blog up to date. But it would be shame not to continue to record here my linocut illustrations for Frank Ronan's monthly column in Gardens Illustrated magazine . . . so here begins a round up with the illustrations for January 2017 to June 2017 . . .

January 2017

Frank writes about the pleasure on a fine winter day, of pruning a rampant Wisteria and how a small cottage can be engulfed by a particularly vigorous Wisteria.

I aimed to give this illustration the feeling of a Grimm's fairytale.

February 2017

Frank's love for one of the native Californian shrubs, Manzanita, isn't put off by it's incendiary reputation, so he experiments with fire to promote germination of its seeds. 

"I might not be so open minded about the beauty of this native were I shivering in a silver blanket in a school gymnasium"

These were Frank's portentous words written a year ago about Californian wildfires which right now are devastating Ventura county with its worst wildfire in modern Californian history. 

March 2017

The plant hunter and nurseryman Michael Wickenden died while on an expedition, this is Frank's tribute to his friend.

I've included Michael walking out into a mountainous landscape, a humble bunch of flowers ... some of the species he collected and grew in his nursery ... and a postcard of the Mountains of the Moon, the scene of one of his adventures. 

April 2017

After reading Frank's piece about using some pink coloured rubble to create terraces and paths around his Californian garden, this design popped into my head fully formed ... it illustrates Frank's fantasy that one day his garden will be full of fruit trees and bushes that he can harvest from as he meanders up and down the sloping terraces.
This was one of my favourite designs from 2017.

May 2017

Flowers often invoke a deeply buried memories and for Frank it is his love of peonies that threads through the years ... his introduction by a cousin to the seductive flower and friends who have added to his collection. I saw this as a still from a whimsical film about a long forgotten childhood meeting.

June 2017

The 'June Frank' text arrived by email and to my surprise Frank is leaving California and on his way home ... where would that be? The magazine editorial and design team were as surprise as I was. We'd have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, as Frank packed his bags and left his Californian garden where he had tried to grow native shrubs, indulged his love of agaves and battled with gophers eating his palm trees; the rains came! His garden flowered, plants he had given up on and watched desiccate, sprang into life and bloomed! I designed the image in warm red/browns but after discussion with the art ed I printed it in a fresh green.

... part 2 of this round-up will follow soon.

Celia

xx

My blog is 10 years old!

I've never kept a traditional written diary (except for holiday journals) but somehow I've kept this blog going for 10 whole years!

My first blog post shows the amazing tidy and sunny vegetable garden 

the vegetable plot, March 2007

. . . and here's the same view today

Looks like I need to do some weeding! The main change has been the Pigeon Proof Pen which keeps the Purple Podded Peas and brassicas safe!

Inside the wall the garden is looking Spring-like and much neater, with lots of daffodils in flower and yesterday Cliff cut the lawn for the first time this year.

Our cockerel, Mr Cheep is now 5 and a half years old, here he is supervising Ivy pecking grass (Ivy, our youngest of the surviving 3 hens, needs no supervision ... she has one spur and occasionally tries to crow! she also lays beautiful brown eggs).

The other hens are Saffron, who is Mr Cheep's biological mum, seen here paddling in the pond ... of course, under supervision!

And finally Nutmeg, who is the same age as Saffron. She was in the nest box preparing to lay one of her lovely blue eggs ... yes, Mr Cheep popped up into the hen-house to supervise!

In the view of the walled garden above, you can also see the Ginger Studio Assistant strolling across the lawn. He and is Tabby sister were very young apprentice assistants when this blog started. She prefers to walk on the wild side!

This blog charts the past ten years of working in my studio, I've found it a useful way to record work in progress and the different things I've done and places I've visited.

I've decided to keep blogging from time to time, but electronic communication methods change rapidly these days, and I'm finding Instagram (which didn't exist when I started blogging, Instagram is only 6 years old) fits easier with busy times ... you can find me on Instagram here, where I'm posting my photos of my Lent sketchbook, Meditations on the Colour of Trees. You can also find me on Twitter.

Thank you for visiting, I know some of you have been following from the  start. And welcome to new visitors who have just stumbled into the Purple Podded Peas blog.

To celebrate, here's a discount code 

BLOGBIRTHDAY10

to get 10% off anything 

in my online shop

valid until midnight on 31 March 2017

A whole decade of my life, recorded in a blog! Who'd have thought?!

I wonder where we'll all be in 10 years form now?

Celia

xx

Illustration for the Telegraph Gardening section

to paraphrase Jane Austen . . .

It is a truth universally acknowledged that nice commissions come along when you are already up to your neck in work!

It was late on Tuesday after that I got the email from the Daily Telegraph's creative director, there was no time to dither the deadline was the following Wednesday afternoon. Yes or No? Overload or miss a juicy commission?

I said yes.

The brief was to illustrate an article about growing edible plants in a shady garden. It was for the front page of the Gardening section of the Saturday Daily Telegraph. I found a previous week's copy and stuck a print out of the designer's layout on the front. The design could break out of the top and slightly overlap the header, I also noticed the bottom of the illustration wouldn't be visible when the paper is folded in half.

I then researched the plants mentioned in the article and did sketches. By Wednesday evening I'd come up with a design - this was a relief as I wouldn't be in my studio on Thursday. However after sleeping on it, I awoke the next morning with an alternative idea! So after frenzied scribbling while eating my porridge I supplied an alternative design as well. And this was the one the creative director liked best. (Moral: always sleep on a design before submitting it!)

Thursday evening . . . I drew a more detailed version of the design and traced it onto the lino ready for cutting on Friday.

Friday was spent carving the lino! I was determined to get it done by 6pm as we were going out for supper and then to a Katherine Ryan gig. Gosh I was tired! but the laughing was a great distraction.

Saturday . . . I printed the lino. A few tweaks and once I had one good impression that was it - hung up to dry.

Sunday was Mothering Sunday - my Mum came to lunch and tea and I did lots of cooking (and eating)

Monday . . . now for more colours . . . the brief was to emphasise the shadiness of the garden by using dramatic blocks of colour. I scanned the printed image (thank goodness for my new studio toy - an A3 scanner) and settled down to work in Photoshop.

Each colour is on a separate layer and is set to 'multiply' with the other layers. The result is just like printing layers of transluscant ink over the scanned linocut. Radio 4 on iPlayer and a mug of tea are also essential.

And there it was finished. 'Just' the last "flight-checks" and the image whizzed by email to the newspaper on Monday evening.


And here it is in this morning's paper . . .

I was pleased with the colours, they looked so zingy on the screen but printed on newsprint they are muted but still bright enough. And the folded paper shows the shady garden and then turn over to see the small sunny area utilised to grow salads in a raised bed and herbs in pots (great idea)

And opened out, here's the illustration in full . . .

If you can't get to read the paper, Lia Leendertz's article is in the online Telegraph (my illustration is only in the print edition) and it's full of interesting ideas for growing edible plants in a shady garden.


Now, what was I doing before I was interrupted! A commission for a music festival programme, a local landscape print and May's Gardens Illustrated magazine illustration. I'll need a holiday in April!

And I haven't yet blogged about the March Garden's illustrated linocut . . . that was an interesting challenge! I'll tell you about that in my next blog post.

Before I finish . . .
on my website I've updated the news and events page, there are some new stockists and in the online shop my Gardens Illustrated linocuts are now available as prints and cards (more are being added over the coming weeks/months).

In my shop you can use the discount code MADMARCH16 to get 15% off your purchases of prints and cards (offer ends midnight on 31 March)

Celia
xx

Fleeting flowers . . . my illustration for February's Gardens Illustrated

When I wrote about my linocut for January's Gardens Illustrated magazine, I mentioned that Frank Ronan's piece for February was one of my favourites . . .

it's about Crocuses . . .

I read the article and worked on the linocut in the first week of the new year, even in this strangely mild winter and premature spring it was long before the Crocuses appeared in our garden. Now in February, perfectly timed with the publication of Frank's column, the Crocuses are in bloom – but as Frank observes, they only open when the sun shines so unlike Snowdrops their beauty is often a brief encounter.

I started by making some careful studies of crocuses from various references including bulb catalogues and my old sketchbooks. 

At some point I had an idea for the composition and scribbled it on a scrap of paper. As well as close ups of Crocus flowers I wanted to include birds on some Ash twigs (mentioned by Frank) and in the background is the gardener admiring the Crocuses open in the winter sunshine.

Frank talks about Galanthophiles arranging Snowdrop parties to admire their treasured plants in flower and muses that to arrange a Crocus party would be impossible as there would be no guarantee of sun on the day. I loved the idea of a Crocus party! In my illustration the gardener's cat is running over to join in the admiration of the flowers.

Here is the finished print and the illustration printed in the magazine. I like the dropped cap and quotation picked out in orange, like the stamens in a purple crocus.

Frank was right, there's often no-one else around to share your excitement of seeing the crocuses fully open in the sunshine . . . but wait – Mr Cheep's come along to the party!

As with all my Gardens Illustrated linocuts, after 6 months this design can be available as a limited edition print and also a card. Designs from last year have been printed and will soon be appearing in my online shop, I'll keep you posted.


The March Gardens Illustrated magazine is at the printers and will soon be on the news stands and now I really should get down to work cutting the block for the April illustration, which means I've completed a full year as a regular contributor to Gardens Illustrated!



Celia
xx