"Inside the box": yellow

 "Indian Yellow" is one of my go-to tubes of paint. Here it celebrates the new flower on the peace lily, inside an amoxycillin box -

Something new...

...this is the first time I used packaging from a vaping product; since then I've picked up dozens from the road. They usually open quite cleanly and are a good size; a series is growing...

This shape used to be a punnet holding tomatoes - turned upside down, it (or its cousin) looks rather like a kimono -

In this box were chocolate eclairs -

More vaping boxes, auditioning for parts in the chorus line -

A King Oscar sardines box -

"Inside the box"

Drawing on recycled packaging that has been opened out. My first attempt, on a box that held chocolate ginger biscuits, was unspectacular - the waxy surface of the box repelled the ink, leaving tiny dots of a very pale grey.

Solid backgrounds, like these sketchbook drawings, were what I was aiming for - 

This box had a hole cut in the shape of a fish - it wrapped smoked salmon -

...the fish is camouflaged among the leaves ...

Another house plant; inside a box of cough syrup

In my window box, cyclamens with seedheads had survived till June - 

Transforming a tissue box -

... with two background colours...

More to come! Since June I've been producing several of these every week. Drawing is with a sharpie and the paint is either acrylic ink or watercolour.

After the rain

 The rain just started when we were on the way to the tube after woodblock class, but had stopped when we emerged, so I took a longer route home (to get some of those 10K steps!) and encountered this lovely shrub in rather a decrepit garden on Fonthill Road -

Is it datura, or is that a vine?

After sunset the final few clouds were dispersing, so wispy, so smudged, and that tree in the distance is so sharp, etched into the moist air -

Lovely light

Drawing Tuesday - plants / flowers

A birthday posy of pretty flowers from Sylvia's garden has been gracing my table -

I drew it (in the A4 sketchbook) with the left hand and coloured it in with the right hand and my limited collection of watersoluble pencils.

From Carol - On the left, what is eating my Swiss Chard and why have they gone to seed straight away? On the right flowers from hubby because I was lockdown sad.

From Joyce - here’s my watercolour of plants on my patio.

From Judith - Watercolour, sometimes it works and often it doesn’t!

From Jackie - Here’s an assortment of little flowers in the garden on a hot afternoon...like forget me knots ... dont know the names of the others.

Ink and water colour.

From Sue S - My choice was this Phlomis Russeliana (Jerusalem sage). Shadows changed after 2 hrs so called it quits.

From Richard - Good to be in the garden, quite noisy with birds, bees, squirrels. 

Mine’s a watercolour but looked rather mimsy so a bit of definition of edges added with caran d’ache.

From Ann - A white and pinky red camellias in a bowl vase with golden coin. I wanted to loosen up with watercolour but then it became insipid so went in with ink and coloured pencils to sharpen up the composition.  Enjoyable to do but over-worked it.

Another is a  drawing is of a magnificent rose in the garden and I'm still working on this one in coloured pencils...

From Najlaa -

From Janet B - Another enjoyable morning in the glorious sunshine with all my coloured pencils spread out in front of me. The potted garden plants were too big to move on to the garden table so I brought out a couple of indoor plants.

From Hazel - I spent the morning drawing my sweet peas growing through a trellis. I like the structure of the trellis in contrast to the vigorous sweet peas. I stopped before the image became too heavy and it was getting very hot in the garden too!

From Gill - Used Chinese ink and my new sword brushes.

Pushed this as far as I could in a new direction for me.

May develop this idea into a painting.

From Janet K - This is my clematis. Done with watercolour and inkintense pencils. I find it really hard to achieve the right colour of green.

My other garden drawing was inspired by the plants and many geraniums on our neighbour's terrace that we are taking care of.

From Sylvia - Bit disappointed with this and took ages!

From Mags - On Sunday I did an hours 'Zoom' course with the London Drawing Group on Mattisse Online :drawing with scissors. Mixed feelings about it but I enjoyed the last few minutes cutting out leaves ( the trick is to move the paper ). So today I gathered a sprig of Cotinus and did some weeding of dandelions and cut into some of my stash of ColourCatchers. Botanical Illustration is too much like work , this was much more fun !

From Jo - "Last year's honesty" - candle wax, pencil, white wax crayon, Derwent china white pencil, water soluble pencils, lead pencil, thumbnail