Maple Flowers

IT PROBABLY doesn’t show in these low res scans of my sketches but I’ve decided to try pencil as a change from pen. The lighter tone of pencil should make my watercolour sketches less like a coloured drawing as the line should blend in more but, I’ve made the lines darker than they should be here. This branch of Field Maple, Acer campestre, (above) currently in flower (those little greenish yellow bobbles) seemed like the ideal subject until, after I’d drawn the first leaf, the branch kept bouncing in the breeze.

At the foot of the hedgerow, Greater Stitchwort, Stellaria holostea, (left) was in flower. The flower appears to have ten petals but it’s actually made up of five deeply knotched petals.

The catkins on the female Sallows, Salix caprea, are now sprouting fluffy seeds.

Problems with Pencil

Pencil is going to take some getting used to. My B pencil soon lost its sharpness as I drew the mape and I continued using a Staedtler 0.3 mm lead Mars Micro clutch pencil. I kept breaking the lead in that as I pressed too hard as I drew, then, when I replaced it with a fresh lead that disappeared without a trace into the innards of pencil. I fell back on my ArtPen for drawing after lunch.