My thirty year old drawing

I did this drawing thirty years ago. It was one of the subjects for the O level Art exam, for the children, when I was teaching. As the teacher I had to provide the objects for them to draw in the exam, in this case root vegetables. I went to my sister to see what she had in her garden and she pulled up this turnip for me. It was so much more interesting than what I could find on the market stalls.
I don't remember if any of the children chose it to draw but I loved it and took it home with me to draw.
It has been framed and hanging in my house for thirty years, the cartridge paper is pitted with brown stains and the paper is crinkled. I haven't looked at it for years, but I see my style in it. It would be the lines and textured qualities which would excite and inspire me to draw it. I alway loved working in pencil, a nice sharp HB pencil. Of course my eyes were better then, I now need my glasses to draw all the detail.
It holds a fascination to me, I love the detail I captured, yes I am proud of this one. I spent many many hours on this large drawing.

A Few Simple Tools

It is what I really like about drawing. You find something that inspires you, in this case a really beautiful gull feather and then with a few simple tools you make a drawing, something unique.

Everyone has their own style, the way they draw and their own marks that they use. It is a dictionary of your own individual marks that you have collected, it is like your finger print. You use them without even realising they are yours alone, hence the uniqueness of your work.

Just like every feather, shell, leaf, acorn or natural object has its own lines, colours, shapes, and patterns which are unique. It is this variety that makes nature so fascinating, the same but different.

So with A few simple tools, my HB pencil (nice and sharp), a pad of lovely smooth bristol board paper and the feather I found in the sand. It had such a lovely clean crisp shape against the pale brown sand, just lost by a sea gull.
Lost, but not for long. It then found its way to my blog.
Press picture for close up.

Lords and Ladies

I love red berries and when I found these three stems of "Lords and Ladies", I just had to draw them. Due to all the wet weather all three of them had rotted away at the base of the stem. The weight of the berries, along with the weakened stem and they had all toppled over. So I rescued them before they all rotted and decayed in the wet soggy grass. The berries are poisonous but I have known this since being told as a child. That is why they are in the plastic bag, I can touch and observe and of course keep washing my hands afterwards.
So that evening I spent four hours quickly getting them down on paper. It was an attempt to capture what I first saw, the bright glowing berries on a gloomy wet day. I hope to draw one with much greater detail and record the lovely way the spathe (once the green hooded leaf), shrivels up and folds like paper at the base of the berries.
I like the shiny berries, still orange coloured and some at an even earlier stage of green. Later in the autumn they turn deep red. They really shine out bright red and glow in the hedgerows on their tall stems, just as everything else is turning brown.
I painted them with acrylic paints...yellow, red, green and yellow orchre mixed my colours. There is something so nice to start with paper and a pencil, paint and a brush and create a drawing, inspired by Nature. Thought you might like to see the real thing, the lords and ladies, found 30th July 2009.