by Leonie Andrews

More onions

There’s something satisfying about making a series of drawings, or any form of art really.

Over the past three weeks I’ve drawn this onion three times. All have been drawn using colour pencils and some with watercolour pencil.

My first one I felt was rather too solid. It looked like it had a hard shell, not papery skin.

First attempt

I tried again the following week with a different angle and a better outcome. I also thought that the placement of the saucer was stronger.

No. 2 a bit more like the onion
skin I wanted to capture

The latest version I drew using both watercolour and standard coloured pencils. I feel that the watercolour pencil gave more translucency to the skin than I achieved previously.

The 3rd version with more watercolour pencils

It has recently been mentioned to me that the onion now needs to be returned to the pantry for eating.

by Leonie Andrews

And the vegetables keep coming!

Two more sketches today from my catalogue of garden vegetables. 

Firstly, what will probably be the last tomato from our garden this season. It’s what we think is an Italian Long Orange Sweet tomato – sadly the person who gave us the seed got the names mixed up, so we’ve had to make an educated guess about it’s real name.

The last tomato of the season?

My latest sketch is of this red onion. I forgot to tell my partner I was saving it  for sketching,  so he bought it inside and tore off the leaves that I had deliberately left on to make a contrast to the colour of the onion’s skin. Nobody’s fault but my own.

The red onion

I think I’ll have another go at the onion. I found it hard to get the shape as accurate as I wanted and I also struggled to capture the paper-iness of the skin.

by Leonie Andrews

Under the volcano

[This was written in December 2025 and never got published, no idea why]

Gunung Api, or lewerani in the local language, is the volcano outside our window, just for this week. We are spending a week in the Banda Neira group of island in the eastern Molucca province of Indonesia.

Gunung Api from Pulau Nalaika (just clouds, not volcanic activity).

Not surprisingly the volcano is the major landmark for the area, visible for miles around. Also prominent on the island of Banda Neira is the Dutch built fort, Benteng Belgica.

On the afternoon of our arrival we climbed up to the fort to sketch. I was fascinated by the rapidly changing late afternoon light, along with sweeping rain showers. I could only get part of the sketch completed, because I had to take cover from the rain. The white shape at the bottom of the sketch is the outline of the fort that was never completed in my sketch.

Gunung Api from Benteng Belgica

While sheltering inside the entrance to the fort. I did make another sketch of the view out through the entrance gate across the channel to the nearby island of Banda Besar.

by Leonie Andrews

Another one in the series

Now we are moving into Autumn my drawings of the vegetables in our garden are transmogrified into seed sketches. You can see some previous sketches here.

This week’s offering is of our Dwarf Burgundy Snake Beans. Alas, these few beans are the sum total of this year’s crop. They really didn’t enjoy our summer weather at all.

Coloured pencil on paper
Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils