Courses!

I've been asked by the Hortus botanicus in Haren (the Netherlands) to give some courses about Botanical Illustration. I put together a full program of different courses throughout the year, starting next April.
If you want to join me there you can look at the schedule on the website of the Hortus (in Dutch).
For more information you can contact me via info@sigridfrensen.com

YAY!

White Rose

Last Friday I showed my students how to make a white flower with coloured pencils. Normally I would prefer to use watercolour as a base for white flowers. It's just more delicate. But it can be done in coloured pencil. The most difficult part is not to use outlines to show the flower but only shadows and colour. This is what I made for them when I demonstrated how to do that. It's a tiny (1 inch) tiny rose. White with a hint of pink.

The image here is a bit enlarged and I wasn't able to get the sharpness, smoothness and the colours right but it's close.
As you can see there are no outlines at all. The darkest shadows are at the overlaps of the petals and are quite strong. Also there's a good amount of shading under the stamens. That shading makes them pop up from the flower.
The biggest reason I don't like to make white flowers with coloured pencil is that there aren't so many subtle, very light coloured pencils. Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils however have a nice range of very light colours, almost whites... So I was happy this time I could use their Buff Titanium for the creamy centre. If you compare it to the cream pencils of Faber-Castell and Prismacolor it is whiter, less yellow. And sometimes it's just that tiny bit that will make the difference.

Courses

These months are all about courses... last week I went to a master class about composition with Anne Marie Evans. I knew she was the best teacher already. This time she gave us such a great class that really opened our eyes and I think it made us all move up a level. We worked and struggled all week with Peonies and at the end of the week I had made a composition with two flowers and a leaf that I would never have done or tried before this class. I don't know if I ever will do something like this composition again (it's a bit too decorative for my taste) but that is not the point. The point is that she made us think much harder and force ourselves to do something that we never would have done. Not going for the easy or obvious composition.

Here's me and Anne Marie (thanks to Janneke Brinkman for taking this photo). See how wild my hair is from all the fighting with the composition? :P
She's here giving me some tips on one of my older paintings that I haven't finished yet. I was very happy to get some pointers that made sense and also that she loved my dark shadows (teehee) and the thin filaments I managed to get into the painting. But that is all more fun for me that it is for you. All you want to know now is how that Peony composition turned out... right? Ok, here it is:

Like I said, very decorative and it would be a great wrap around a bar of heavy scented pink soap. I haven't done much more than this since then because there's my own class that I'm teaching these weeks. I hope to get the Peonies painted after that.

This week my students learned how to draw leaves and flowers, how to measure things, how to work with graphite pencil and more basics. Next week they will start with coloured pencil. I'm very excited about that since it's the first time I'm doing a course about that. I'll try not to forget to take some pics next week so I can show you the place (we're in the greenhouse of De Kruidhof. That's a botanical garden in Buitenpost in Friesland, in the North of the Netherlands).

Finally another photo of moi that Ria van Elk took at the Anne Marie Evans Composition Course in Leiden (I really love this photo):

A Bulb Drawing and Some News

A lot has happened lately. Really... a lot. I'm happy to say it's all quite positive. I finished a bulb drawing today, an interview about me and my art was published in Noorderland magazine, I finally built my new website (and it works!!!!) and I'll be teaching in a new course about drawing botanical art with coloured pencils. It's a lot.

First of all, let me show you the drawing. It's done in coloured pencil and it's a Crocosmia 'Lucifer' bulb which I pulled out of my garden this week. The contrast of the died leaves and the new, toxic green sprout is so nice. Well, I like it anyway :P

It wasn't an easy thing to draw in coloured pencil. I think it would have been more easy if I had used only graphite pencils. The hardest part of it was the fibre, straw-like part above the bulb and between the two dead leaves. White thin sprigs. Many of them too... Ah well, I managed it somehow and I'm rather pleased with the result too. That doesn't happen so often.

So... then there's the article, 6 full pages in a very nice magazine, Noorderland. A large interview, a lot of my drawings (nicely printed) and nice photos of stuff in my studio and also of me. So if you live in the Netherlands or there about, have a look.

Now, because I was going to feature in this big article I really had to update my website. And because I'm such a stubborn person that always knows best and never likes prefab website designs, I wanted to build it myself. I'm happy now with the style and all I need now is to build a little e-store to sell cards, prints and other stuff. So if you haven't done it already, please have a look at it. Some feedback is always nice ;)

www.sigridfrensen.com

Finally the 6-day-drawing-course. That will be (I really hope I get enough students for this) next June in the botanical garden "De Kruidhof" in Buitenpost. On my website is a folder with more info. It will be six days in three weeks time. I'm looking forward to it... sitting in the gardens there, peacefully struggling with all the plant material, trying hard to get it all down on paper.... Aaaaah..... splendid!

Akebia and others....

It has been too long since I've posted something here. But.... I've been busy. I went on a botanical painting course of five days in Leiden. My tutor was Anne Marie Evans and I learnt a lot that week. We painted tulips. I guess tutors from abroad want to see tulips when they come to Holland. Last year, Valerie Oxley started her course with (yellow) tulips. I just hope this is not becoming a trend. I like tulips, don't get me wrong, I like them in a garden or a vase. Not to paint them. But I think I'm repeating myself, I told you all this before, didn't I?

Anyway.... I painted a botanical tulip, Tulipa turkestanica. It didn't make things easier for me (this one had five flowers instead of one and was almost white) but it looked far more interesting that most of the other tulips. Well it did for me, don't know about the other students ;) Here's what the painting looked like at the end of the course:

It's not finished yet, it needs roots and more details but you get the idea. It looks a bit old-fashioned, like it's from the 18th century, like Redouté or something. Very different to what I'm used to.

After the course I painted in "De Keukenhof" for a day with some other painters of the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. We sat in the Orchid pavilion, surrounded by hundreds of tourists from all over the globe, stuck or not stuck in the Netherlands by the Icelandic vulcano ashes.
So I painted my first ever orchid flower. Many botanical artists paint orchids. I didn't and I don't think I'll paint those cultivated orchids again. I just don't like them. I like the wild ones that grow here in the Netherlands but they don't look at all like the ones shown in the pavilion in Lisse.

The week after I had to go to the opening of the Siebold exhibition in the Siebold House in Leiden. A wonderful exhibition with wonderful paintings made by the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. My Hydrangea drawing is exhibited there too. Also a lot of old herbaria and floriligia are shown. Really nice to see the old things from the Siebold period next to the modern works of art.

I made this in Photoshop to show you the difference between the periods. The old painting was made by a Japanese painter and the Hydrangea on the left is a dried specimen that Siebold brought to Europe. It's a different variety than the one that I painted but I don't think he would have minded that :P

Now I'm back home and I decided to start a pencil drawing. It has been too long since I made my last graphite pencil botanical. It's of Akebia quinata, also a Siebold introduction. It has been on my wishlist for some years and it's flowering now in my front yard. I love this climber. The leaves are very interesting, the flowers are maybe even more interesting. But the colour of the flower is wonderful..... but I decided to do a graphite drawing anyway :D Maybe I'll make a coloured thing some other year. Now I just had to do a pencil drawing. So this is a WIP. I'll post it again when it's finished.

Spring please...

I've so had it with this winter. It was too cold and too dark for too long. I really need spring now. To get myself a bit of spring-feeling I bought loads of tulips this week.





Next month I'll join a botanical painting course again. This time the tutor will be Anne-Marie Evans. The theme that week will be tulips. I'm not a tulip fan. I never painted them before. Well, I had to last year in the previous course. But never voluntarily.




Today I did. One of my tulips is now also a watercolour. I thought it would be good to get some practice with my watercolours and the tulips before the course. There will be more tulips to come. Anyway....This is a very girlie one but it was fun to paint. Hope you like it too :)

Thorns

This is the last drawing I'll show you of my botanical drawing course with Valerie Oxley, three weeks ago. Valerie told us a few remarkable things about the difference between thorns, prickles and spines. She wanted us to make sketches of them. She brought all sorts of painful subjects. Like roses (of course) thistles and Pyracantha (Firethorn). I made a few sketches but I didn't want to make one page with the different branches and leaves. I wanted to end the course in colour and decided to make a coloured pencil drawing of a Berberis twig. I finished the drawing when I got home. I really like this one. The sharp pointy thorns and the beautiful colours were a lot of fun to draw.

The drawing I will not show you is the drawing I made of a Stachys leaf. We learned a few things about painting and drawing hairy and silver coloured leaves. The drawing wasn't very good. Maybe with a bit more experimenting with the different techniques I will come up with a good result but this leaf was a bad experience. The thing I learned that day was that I don't like to draw hairy and silver coloured leaves.

Anyway.... This course was a lot of fun. I met some very nice people again and Valerie Oxley taught me some very good things. I hope you enjoyed this too :)

A leaf

I promissed to show you some more results from my botanical drawing course. On Tuesday we did a practice with leaves. How to draw and paint twisted, folded and turned leaves. Most of the ladies in the course made a drawing/painting of a hosta or Persicaria leaf. I was the only one drawing this leaf. The woman who brought this leaf to the course told me it was a Helianthus leaf. But I have big doubts about that. But it doesn't matter very much. It's only a practice after all.

Greens are difficult and leaves can be so very, very hard to draw well. Actually I admire artists that paint a lot of foliage. To paint one or two beautiful leaves is great of course. But to paint a whole bunch of them and do them perfectly.... sigh..... I just don't have the patience to do that.

Anyway... Here's the drawing. Coloured pencil again. And I must say that I'm pretty pleased with it. The fade-away distant colours just happened. I didn't think too much about that.

I had some trouble with the pencils though. The tutor, Valerie Oxley, brought some pencils to the course. I could use them if I wanted to. A nice way to try out some other brands. I tried some greens from the Derwent Coloursoft series. I wish I hadn't. I picked a beautiful Dark Green colour. A super colour for the shadow parts in this leaf. But when I burnished some of it with my white pencil the green turned into a viridian/ cobalt blue greenish colour. Very bright. I tried to get it all out of the leaf, but as you can see... here and there I couldn't. Never mind. It was a good practice and now I'm very sure I don't like the Derwent coloursoft pencils.

Yellow

Last week I joined a 5 day botanical drawing course. My tutor that week was the wonderful Valerie Oxley. The Dutch Society of Botanical Artists invited her over for this masterclass. Every day we practiced a different subject of botanical painting and drawing.

We started on Monday with yellow flowers. Yellow flowers artists often avoid because they are a bit tricky. Not me... I avoided yellow flowers just because I don't like them. But that day there was no excuse, we had to do a yellow flower. A tulip.
The first drawing we did was done by putting in the shadows first and then the colours. (I forgot to tell you that there were people working with watercolour and also some people worked with coloured pencils. I was very happy I wasn't the only one using the pencils) The second drawing was the other way around. You can see here the first drawing on the left and the second drawing on the right.

In the first drawing I used greys for the shadow parts. In the second drawing I used a bit of light violet and warm grey in the darker parts. As always with light coloured flowers (or any other subject with a light colour) I concluded that it's better to work in the shadows later because you have more controle over the colours.

I had fun doing this practice although I still don't like yellow flowers. And I also still believe that yellow tulips is the closest you can get to a plastic-flower-look. Later this week I'll post some more drawings and sketches I made during this course.

Calla

Haven't blogged in a while. But I'll make it up by this one. I've been very busy lately. One of the things that keep me busy these weeks is a basic course in Botanical Drawing with graphite pencils. It's a three day course and is in the Nature museum of Leeuwarden.
Yesterday was the second day of the course. The students had to draw flowers. I had a lot of flowers with me for them to draw. Amongst them also Calla lilies. I never did a Calla Lily before and I thought it might be fun to try one. So I made a start yesterday but couldn't work a lot on this drawing because I had to walk around a lot and help the students (which was a lot of fun btw). So today I finished the drawing. And this is the final result: