‘Ruby Red’ Swiss chard, with its crinkled leaves and richly colored stems, is almost as much fun to draw as it is to eat. This year, instead of the traditional pot of New Year collards simmering on the stove, our first supper of 2012 was a chard and feta pie, incorporating ingredients from our winter garden. I love chard’s delicate spinach flavor and its prolific growing habit – plus, those lovely leaves are packed with Vitamins A, K, C and protein. And did I mention that fairies like it, as well?

This little drawing is colored pencil on acid-free vellum cardstock. Brilliant white with a smooth surface and a little more heft than drawing paper, premium cardstock makes a terrific sketching medium. Try it — you’ll be pleased.

Just in time for Christmas, I’m giving away a wonderful stuffed kitty by Sweet Paisley Studio. Handmade with cleverly upcycled fabrics and block-printed features, this cutie will delight the cat lover on your holiday gift list. (I particularly like those long, stripey legs.)

Leave a comment below to be entered in the drawing — be sure your comment links back to your blog or email so that I can notify you if you win. Selection will be made this Saturday, Dec. 17 by www.random.org. Good luck!

I started with just my black-and-white graphite sketch of a young fairy and his mouse friend, printed it on vellum paper in archival ink… then I added multiple layers of rich colored pencil by hand, so that the finished image is a one-of-a kind original.  In thanks to readers of The Illustrated Garden blog, I will make 20 of these artworks available for $40 apiece… each signed, numbered and matted in an acid-free 8×10 inch mat. I’ll also provide free shipping anywhere in the United States.

Oh! And one more thing… each piece of fairy art will come with a packet of heirloom herb or vegetable seeds from my garden, tucked inside a hand-embellished seed package. Email me to order.

WEEKLY STUDIO CLASSES IN MOBILE

How to Draw People  (Wednesdays starting Jan. 4, six weeks,  from 2-5pm or 6:30-8:30pm)                                                                                                         Not a life drawing class, but an intensive course on drawing people who look natural and are proportionate whether they are infants, children, adults or senior citizens. Learn to draw hands and feet, hair and clothing. Draw facial expressions that communicate emotion. Some very basic drawing experience is helpful, but all are welcome. We will work in graphite and charcoal pencil. All materials provided.                                     $140

Watercolor Pencils & Watercolor Brush (Thursdays starting Jan. 5, six weeks, from 2-5pm or 6:30-8:30)                                         Learn some surprising uses for vivid and versatile watercolor pencils, capturing a wide range of effects from loose and impressionistic (on rough watercolor paper) to rich detail resembling an oil painting (on velvet suede board). We’ll also combine watercolor pencils with traditional watercolors to create layers of color. Subjects range from outdoor scenes to animals and plants. No experience necessary. Paper and support materials provided, bring your own watercolor pencils.                                                                              $140

WEEKLY STUDIO CLASSES IN FAIRHOPE

How to Draw People  (Tuesdays starting Jan. 3, six weeks,  from 6:30-8:30pm)                                                                                                                 Not a life drawing class, but an intensive course on drawing people who look natural and are proportionate whether they are infants, children, adults or senior citizens. Learn to draw hands and feet, hair and clothing. Draw facial expressions that communicate emotion. Some very basic drawing experience is helpful, but all are welcome. We will work in graphite and charcoal pencil. All materials provided.                                     $140

WORKSHOPS 

Draw Birds of Coastal Mississippi (Saturday, Jan. 14 from 10am-3pm, Delo’s House of Coffee, Gautier, MS)  LIMITED TO VERY SMALL GROUP    - WILL FILL QUICKLY                                                                                                               Use graphite and colored pencils to draw native birds of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Learn to capture feather textures and to create expressive, lifelike eyes. No experience necessary and all materials will be provided.  Your registration fee must be received to hold your place.                                                                                            $50

Color Mixing Workshop  (Saturday, Jan. 28 from 10am-3pm, Val’s studio cottage in Mobile)                                                                Take the mystery out of color theory and learn to mix the exact color you want, quickly and efficiently. Learn to decipher the codes on paint tube labels to understand the pigments strength, lightfastness and toxicity of your colors.  Confidently mix skin tones, browns, grays and beiges. Sample some of my favorite color recipes. Never make “mud” again! All materials provided.   Your registration fee must be received to hold your place.           $50                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Nature Drawing Workshop: Winter’s Tale   (Saturday, Feb. 25 from 10am-3pm, Five Rivers Delta Resource Center, on the Causeway in Spanish Fort, AL)        The stories of spring lie hidden just beneath the surface as winter draws to a close along the Gulf Coast. There is a simple beauty in bare branches, seed pods, tiny buds emerging and the first insects to venture forth as the seasons turn back toward warmer days. Spend a day in one of Alabama’s most beautiful waterfront settings, using traditional drawing techniques to create elegant and accurate drawings of winter nature subjects in pen-and-ink. No experience necessary! All art supplies provided.  This event helps support wildlife education programs at 5 Rivers.                                                                                                                                 $60                                                                                                                                        

Embellished with original illustrations and hand lettering, GIFT CERTIFICATES are now available for all classes and workshops listed here. Email me to request one: studio@valwebb.com.

At the far end, some Brussels sprouts snuggle up to a row of romaine lettuce.  Next week, when the romaine is harvested, I’ll fill in their little slice of real estate with some yellow globe onions. After several years of large-scale gardening, I really love working on a more intimate scale… planting and transplanting just a few square feet at a time provides a constant parade of assorted produce. I probably need to exercise more self-control in this area, though. Does anyone really need nine varieties of lettuce? Salads, anyone?

Some of the aforementioned lettuces are in the ”baby bed” next to the driveway. I set out seedlings very close together and they grew in a leafy mound that can be gradually eaten as the baby lettuces are thinned out, allowing the remaining plants to reach full size. These little fellows are Tango Early Oakleaf, Lolla Rosa and Red Sails, all from Good Scents Herbs and Flowers in Robertsdale, Alabama. In other beds are Deer Tongue, Arugula and Tom Thumb.

Gypsy sweet peppers, Buttercrunch lettuce, more Oakleaf, onions and giant mutant basil share one raised bed. Each bed is 4×4 and 10 inches high, filled with equal parts peat moss, mushroom compost and vermiculite. I use pine needles for mulch. Thanks to a trio of towering longleaf pines overhanging the yard, mulch falls conveniently out of the sky every day.

Meanwhile, the newer raised bed is home to Red Bor kale, Swiss chard, and some upwardly mobile heirloom snap peas on a scrounged-bamboo-and-Zip-tie trellis.

My backyard is small, and only a few precious spots receive the full sun that herb plants crave. Some of the sunniest real estate is a skinny strip against the south side of a storage shed. The peppermint in the background, doing its level best to climb out of a wooden crate, sprouted from a single cutting in August.
A pocket garden at one end of the shed has snap peas, bulb fennel, cardoon and a few leftover lettuces. And that protective fence embracing all the backyard plantings — the hardware store refers to it as rabbit wire, but it’s beagle wire to me.

Color makes such a difference — here’s the dragonfly hitchhiker after a layer of colored pencil. I used umbers (light and dark) and pumpkin orange for this autumn fairy’s body and wings, then combined peacock blue and true blue for the bluejay feathers and for the shadows on the dragonfly’s wings. I finished it off with a layer of cream color over the entire drawing, which adds a little extra warmth. All done!