I couldn’t see much of the flowers of red bartsia, which poke their purplish-red lips out of the calyxes which are arranged facing the same way along the stem. Perhaps of the resemblance flower spike to a row of pointed teeth is why the plant acquired a reputation as a herbal remedy for tootache. Carl Linnaeus gave it the Latin name, Odontites verna; Odontites was a name that Pliny gave to a plant that was said to be good for treating toothache.
Smalltoothcombia Domestica, from Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany.
The racemes (toothbrush-like arrangements) of the flowers led to this familiar weed’s old Yorkshire name of cock’s comb.
Red bartsia is a member of the Figwort family and, like its relative the yellow rattle, it is semi-parasitic on the roots of grasses.
Bartsia was named by Linnaeus in memory of his friend, the German physician and botanist Johann Bartsch who died aged 29 in Suriname in 1738.
‘A reed shaken by the wind’ is my subject at Old Moor today. I’ve labelled it as the common reed, Phragmites communis, but Wikipedia points out that communis is considered an ‘illegitimate name’ and that I should now be calling it Phragmites australis.
It resists the wind not just by its flexibility and its hollow stem construction but because the leaves, growing from sheathes that clasp the stem can rotate as they’re blown around.
While my habitual pen and brown ink might be appropriate for the reed, but I felt that would be too strident for the white water-lily, Nymphaea alba. Dragonflies zoomed around over the pond but the only insects visiting the water-lily as I drew it were a few flies.
Water mint, Mentha aquatica, is now in flower, growing along the edges of the drainage ditches.
Water plantain, Alisma plantago-aquatica, was growing next to it, emerging from the water. Ruskin saw the elegant arrangement of veins in its leaves as an example of the kind of ‘divine proportion’ that inspired Gothic architecture.
When Convent Thoughts, a sharp-focus study of a contemplative nun standing by a lily pond by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Charles Allston Collins’, came in for criticism at the 1851 Royal Academy summer show, Ruskin wrote in a letter to The Times;
“I happen to have a special acquaintance with the water plant Alisma Plantago . . and . . I never saw it so thoroughly or so well drawn. For as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.”
Ruskin’s endorsement helped redress the criticism but, although habitat may be right for it, Alisma plantago, the water plantain, doesn’t appear in the painting.
This rather spindly wild carrot was growing in a sunny south-facing clearing amongst the willows, alders and dragonfly ponds at RSPB Old Moor nature reserve.
I was drawing the fly which settled on my left arm when a fresh-looking comma settled on my right leg. The fly then moved to my nose and, as it had a suspiciuosly long beak-like proboscis, I had to brush it away, losing my chance to sketch the butterfly.
The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Ledsham Vale is a long thin strip of meadow so as the rest of group make their way to the top end I can pause to draw field scabious.
I’ve always preferred to use cartridge for sketchbook work and to save the more expensive watercolour paper for my finished work but I’ve recently moved over to Pink Pig’s Ameleie watercolour sketchbooks, which I think is a step in the right direction.
Today as I set out to a golden wedding garden party I grabbed an A5 landscape format Langton sketchbook. Langton is traditionally mould made fine grained 300 gm (140 lb) ‘Not’ paper. ‘Not’ means cold rather than hot pressed. I thought this might be too absorbent and textured for ink but there’s no sign of bleeding, which makes a welcome change from my current ‘Wainwright’ sketchbook.
The ‘hammered’ surface of the paper is enough to give a slight stippliness, which adds character to a watercolour wash.
I’ve been back at the RSPB’s Old Moor reserve, keeping my focus on flowers, which makes sense as it’s rather a quiet time for birds. I’ve added more drawings to some of last week’s pages.
Sketches made over the last two days at RSPB Old Moor, South Yorkshire. Having practiced some botanical illustration in the studio last week, I wanted to see how I could carry that through into sketchbook work.
It was so warm at lunchtime today that I took shelter in the family hide, which was pleasantly cool with all the flaps open and light; unusually for a hide it has floor to ceiling windows. Again with improving my observation in mind, I concentrated on one species, the lapwing, until a black-headed gull chased it away.
Great burnet and yellow-rattle.
A variable species, this was growing in a dry area, by a hedge near the visitor centre.
Marsh orchid, probably the Northern Marsh Orchid.
Scrambling amongst vegetation by the marsh.
Melilot, a tall leguminous herb on drier ground.
Lapwing in moult. I guess that it’s an adult but it could be a juvenile coming into its adult plumage.
Purple loosestife – my last sketch of the day and it proved quite a challenge with all those interlocking stems and foliage, especially as it kept blowing about in the afternoon breeze.
Having the plant right there in front of me should make it easy but, like all flowers, this potato is a restless sitter.
It takes me longer than I think to get so far and I’m far from satisfied with the result but the end result isn’t really the point of the exercise;
‘You can only reproduce something well if you [see and observe]. If you can decode what you see, you will be able to explain it, and anyone who sees your drawing will be able to understand it. The artist’s view is just as important and personal as the subject itself.’
Agathe Haevermans, Drawing and Painting the Seashore
I’m happy just to spend the day observing and hopefully turning that into a successful botanical drawing will follow on from that.
In Impressionism by sampling spots of colour in a detached way, you should be able to build up a convincing image even of an object in the landscape that you can’t identify. Courbet was supposedly able to accurately paint a patch on a distant hillside without ever asking what it was – a limestone outcrop, a patch of dried vegetation or a pile of chippings. The colour and texture were enough.
With botanic drawing you’re really trying to deconstruct then reconstruct the subject in order to clearly explain it.
Perhaps I should have taken the flower apart before I started drawing.
Mr Atkinson, my maths teacher, saw me struggling with geometry and examined my pencil;
‘You could plant a potato with that, Bell!’
Sharpening up my act, this morning I’m drawing potato flowers with a 4H pencil, sharpened with a craft knife and honed to a point with an abrasive pad.
I don’t ever remember choosing a 4H for drawing but I’m taking advice from Agathe Haevermans’ The Art of Botanical Drawing and she often suggests starting out with a hard pencil. If you need to erase there’s less risk of damaging the surface of the paper because the harder lead stays on the surface.
For white flowers like these she suggests erasing almost to the point where your outlines become invisible, so that you don’t get pencil lines showing through your wash.
This variety of second early potato is Vivaldi and, by coincidence when I started this drawing they were playing Vivaldi’s Concerto in B Flat on Radio 3.
I like to draw is on location, direct from nature so why have I brought this herb into my studio?
After reading up on botany this spring I feel the need to go in closer to my subject, something that I struggle to do when flowers are blowing about in the meadow.
I’ve resisted the urge to reach for my pen but I still want a sharp line so I use an abrasive pad to keep a point on my HB pencil. I need to do this four or five times during the course of the drawing.
Botanical Drawing
The Art of Botanical Drawing by Agathe Ravet-Haevermans has given me some gentle encouragement. There are meticulous examples of her work as a scientific illustrator at the Museum of Natural History in Paris but also a few sketches from her field trips in Madagascar and South Africa. Step by step drawings and swatches of the watercolours used in each example show how she depicts the flowers, fruits and foliage of familiar garden flowers and exotic blooms.
Pink Pig 8 x 8 Amelele 270 gsm watercolour sketchbook, White Nights watercolours, Cotman reversible brushes.
My favourites amongst them are the different kinds of bark, the cherry tomatoes on a vine, the fungi and the bunch of carrots.
Encouragingly for the rest of us she concludes with a selection of her mistakes; ‘But is it such a disaster? It’s just time and a sheet of paper. The most important thing is to be able to learn from it.’
I’ll keep that in mind as I try to get into botanical mode.
I couldn’t see much of the flowers of red bartsia, which poke their purplish-red lips out of the calyxes which are arranged facing the same way along the stem. Perhaps of the resemblance flower spike to a row of pointed teeth is why the plant acquired a reputation as a herbal remedy for tootache. Carl Linnaeus gave it the Latin name, Odontites verna; Odontites was a name that Pliny gave to a plant that was said to be good for treating toothache.
