by Leonie Andrews

Christmas flowers

I thought I had better sketch my Christmas flowers before they were past their best. They are Christmas Bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum) and Red Flowering gum (Corymbia ficifolia). The flowering gum is allready dropping it’s stamens at an alarming, though beautiful, rate.

Relaxing and sketching on Boxing Day.

Before the lunchtime devastation!

5 Comments

    1. Thanks Emma! I have done a number of sketches this year where I have really focussed on leaving the negative space. It seems to work so well. I have been tremendously inspired by the work of Dorothy English Paty, a colonial era painter who documented the plants from the area of my home town of Newcastle in New South Wales.
      https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138678942/view She was a prodigious talent but died just before leaving the then colony of Newcastle. Her compositions were as inventive as her work was.

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      1. I had not come across the work of Dorothy English Paty. Her work is beautiful. It reminds me of a painting mother inherited from her second cousin. It is of a chrysanthemum which cuts across the frame of composition a bit like this. It’s an interesting approach. It means you get a good close up of the flower and an interesting tension between the image and the negative space.

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      2. I only heard of her work at a talk at the National Library of Australia. They hold as far as the researcher could ascertain the only examples of her work so she is quite obscure. https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/517538?c=people One interesting English connection is that the album’s of her work come from the Rec Nan Lovell collection. As I was reading in one of my Christmas books today Nan Lovell was running the Redfern Gallery in London in the mid 20th century and supported many modern artists. Sorry couldn’t go past that bit of trivia.

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Thanks for commenting, I like to hear your thoughts and ideas.