Back by request: Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil

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art classes, botanical art, butterflies, colored pencil, creativity, drawing, flowers, gardening, how to draw, illustration, sketchbook, Val Webb

Old-fashioned flowers! Veggies! Butterflies, bees and dragonflies! A new session of my popular online class, Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil, starts Nov. 3. Work at your own pace, with five months to explore all 10 lessons. No experience necessary. Click here for more info.

Sometimes staining can be a good thing

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art, art classes, botanical art, creativity, flowers, how to draw, illustration, sketchbook, Val Webb

Speaking as someone who once spilled an entire mocha latte down the front of my shirt 15 minutes before I was due to speak before a workshop group, I can vouch for the staining power of coffee. But it’s that very characteristic that makes coffee a terrific alternative painting medium — it stains white paper with a gorgeous (and delightfully aromatic) brown tone similar to a watercolor wash. This page in my 2008 sketchbook is painted and lettered with three varieties of my favorite beverage:

I love drawing and painting on stained paper, with its raw warmth and sometimes-bark-sometimes-leather texture. We used earth-based acrylic pigment to stain sheets of watercolor paper in my recent North Carolina workshop. Dogwoods were blooming in the mountain coves, so we drew them in layered colored pencil and charcoal:

This week, I’m staining lots of paper in front of a video camera in preparation for the upcoming Botanical Sketchbook Painting course. The best part is the fact that you never get the same result twice — each sheet is uniquely smudged and pocked, each with its own rustic beauty. The second best part is the fact that… well… someone has to drink all that leftover coffee.

Exactly one month from today…

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art classes, botanical art, colored pencil, creativity, drawing, flowers, illustration, Val Webb

…a new session of “Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil” will begin.

Back by popular demand, this course includes 10 lessons on drawing old-fashioned flowers and vegetable plants — plus how to draw water droplets, transparent glass and favorite garden insects. Butterflies! Bees! Dragonflies! All in colored pencil. More info is available on my Upcoming Online Classes page.

Bees, blooms and “Mad Honey Disease”

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botanical art, colored pencil, drawing, flowers, illustration, journal, Val Webb

One of my favorite parts of drawing garden subjects is the unexpected discovery of some startling bit of botanical history — a story that pops up like an unexpected seedling and demands to be shared. It happened recently during preparation for my online course, The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil. A strange story about rhododendrons wrapped its roots around my imagination and wouldn’t let go.

Rhododendrons (and their popular relative, azaleas) produce pollen that contains a small amount of potent neurotoxin. Called grayanotoxin, it’s not harmful under ordinary circumstances… but occasionally, when concentrated by honeybees as they make rhododendron honey, it can cause a nasty illness marked by hallucinations and digestive distress. Although rare today — the most recent US cases on record happened in Seattle in 2011 — “mad honey disease” has a special place in history.

A clever first-century general defeated an entire invading army by putting grayanotoxin to work. During a battle in the Black Sea region in 67 BC, Pompey ordered his troops to leave honeycomb laced with “mad honey” along the path of approaching Roman soldiers. The hungry invaders took the bait. Sickened and disoriented, the Romans were no match for the waiting enemy.

The rhododendron, then, is much more than just a pretty face. Grow them, celebrate their history… but don’t put your beehives too close by.

 

Drawing the Heirloom Garden

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art classes, botanical art, butterflies, colored pencil, drawing, flowers, gardening, illustration, Val Webb

This week, we’re drawing old-fashioned roses in my online course, The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil. Romantic, gorgeous and wonderfully fragrant, these blooms have been a favorite throughout human history. Roses appear in ancient stone carvings… they were painted on the ceilings of Roman banquet rooms… knights carried them during the Crusades. The Empress Josephine was a passionate rose breeder. So was George Washington.

Don’t let the many-layered structure of rose “architecture” scare you off. There’s a natural sequence to drawing them, starting at the heart of the bloom and working your way to the edges. It’s a slow and enjoyable journey. Colors are layered, too, beginning with the lightest ones and building up a luxurious intensity. Put on your favorite music and make a cup of coffee, then sharpen those colored pencils. Think of it as drawing therapy.

The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil, a course consisting of 10 interactive lessons plus a bonus lesson, will be offered again in March. Click here for more info.

An old garden and a new adventure

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art classes, botanical art, colored pencil, creativity, drawing, flowers, gardening, sketchbook, Val Webb

The autumn breeze that stirs stalk and leaf in this 18th Century garden carries a drowsy hint of lavender. Four sprawling raised beds are arranged in the good German tradition: a square hemmed with pickets, divided by a stone pathway in the shape of a cross.
It’s early October in the kitchen garden at Schifferstadt, an imposing Maryland farmhouse built in 1758. Most of the season’s harvest has come and gone, leaving brown skeletons to rattle their dried-out seed heads in the chilly sunlight. But the hardiest botanicals are still green and several remain stubbornly in bloom: French lavender, flowering tobacco, calendula, yarrow.

Nearly three weeks into my road trip, I’m now in the valley just beyond the easternmost ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, not far from the presidential retreat at Camp David. I’m gathering material on heirloom plants for my upcoming online course, The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil. And so I spent an afternoon sharing the Schifferstadt plots with the bees and mantises, marveling over colonial plants I rarely see in my own subtropical climate zone.

The biggest plantings were those varieties offering the widest range of practical uses in the farmer’s household. One particularly choice slice of garden real estate was occupied by Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium verum), a feathery groundcover with an astonishing job description: it is a vegetable rennet for making cheese, a delightfully honey-scented mattress stuffing material, the roots produce red dye and the flowers yield a yellow hair rinse reputed to be popular with young milkmaids.

I’m traveling in my camper studio, “Beatrix,” with two canine co-pilots, Atticus and Jo. Two weeks ago, we made our way up through the fall wildflowers of Georgia and Virginia to spend some time in the rolling ridges near Washington D.C. Tomorrow, we’ll turn the steering wheel southward and roll down through Tennessee and Mississippi, back home to coastal Alabama and the little farmhouse at the end of the road. I have lots of fresh material for the Heirloom Garden course, courtesy of Maryland’s abundant flora. It has been a good journey.

New course! Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil

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art classes, botanical art, butterflies, colored pencil, creativity, drawing, flowers, how to draw, Val Webb

Old-fashioned flowers and their pollinators, including bees and butterflies, will be the focus of a new 10-lesson online course beginning November 3. “The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil” will provide detailed, step-by-step instruction in seeing and accurately drawing a wide range of flowering plants in graphite and colored pencil. No previous art experience needed.

The course is designed to be “work-at-your-own-pace.” Lessons will post weekly on a password-protected site, and students have a five-month window (through April 3) to complete all 10 lessons. Personal instructor feedback and guidance is provided through email, as often as you wish.

The cost of the course is $65. To sign up, email studio@valwebb.com.

 

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD SUPPLY LIST

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD DETAILS ABOUT HOW TO VIEW THE COURSE AND RECEIVE FEEDBACK

 

Irresistible: gouache resist

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art, art classes, botanical art, flowers, Val Webb, watercolor, workshops

My online class in Watercolor Lettering has kept me very busy for the past several weeks, but on Saturday I had the pleasure of teaching a small workshop in a beautiful riverfront hideaway near Moss Point, Mississippi. The trees overhanging the water were full of trumpet vine, and we put them to use as the subject of gouache resist paintings. I love gouache resist, which is the art equivalent of opening a mysterious present on Christmas morning. You don’t know what you have until the wrappings are torn away to reveal the surprise beneath. In my method, I begin with a quick pencil sketch on heavy watercolor paper. Next I create the painting with a very thick (we’re talking peanut-butter-thick here) layer of gouache. After allowing it the dry completely, the painting is covered in a layer of waterproof India ink — I use a two-inch housepainting brush for this step. That has to dry, as well, before the fun begins: I take the piece outside and put it under a stream of water from the garden hose, scrubbing the ink away with the aforementioned house painting brush. Under that layer of inky blackness is a jewel-toned image, and everywhere the paper remained blank are lines of India ink. Old clothes are highly recommended for this adventure!

An old favorite and a new technique

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botanical art, drawing, flowers, gardening, illustration, painting, Val Webb, watercolor

I love coneflowers… and my very favorite is Echinacea purpurea. I grow it in my garden, draw it, paint it and carve it into clay tiles. This one was painted in gouache, allowed to dry thoroughly, then brushed with a coat of waterproof India ink and scrubbed under running water. The final step was to add a bit of ink detail on the leaves and petals with an 01 Pigma Micron drawing pen. I like the final effect; it reminds me of vintage illustration. As soon as my busy studio schedule slows a tiny bit, I will post a step-by-step tutorial, so you can try it out for yourself.

Evening Sun

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art, botanical art, drawing, flowers, gardening, illustration, painting, Val Webb, watercolor

I was late planting sunflowers this spring, so while the cut-flower fields at the edge of town are already resplendent with buttery yellow blooms, mine are still all stalks and leaves on the ascent. I always try to include my favorite, Evening Sun (Helianthus annuus) in the garden patch mix. Velvety red petals with a touch of yellow – and dense centers the color of bittersweet chocolate – make them wonderful to draw. This one is painted in gouache and India ink on heavy watercolor paper.