I have decided to apply to join a local Botanical Art society - well, I say join but they haven't said yes yet! In the process of putting together my submission I realise that I haven't really done much in the way of plants or flowers. Or, more accurately, I have tried and found to my dismay that the delicate and subtle textures of petals and leaves are really hard to capture!
Today I had a go at a simple sprig of olive, but I haven't done particularly well. It just looks messy and grubby and clumsy - because it's thoroughly overworked. The leaves are quite battered and spotted with a bit of disease which I like, and they also genuinely looked much greener than you'd expect. Olive foliage tends to a much softer, glaucous grey-green as a rule, but I wonder if the light bouncing off my yellow walls made the leaves look a bit 'greener'.
I quite like the 'lines', but the surface and textures are bleurgh. Lots of work for me to do on tackling green things then, and this won't be going towards supporting my application.
For comparison, here's an image of the sketch that I used to transfer onto the watercolour paper. I like this better, even though the lines are really heavy and graphic due to the transfer process I used.
