Wild Strawberries

I thought it was too early for wild strawberries but apparently not.  We have seen a lot of them on our local walks.  To start with we only noticed the flowers

and then all of a sudden the fruit appeared.  VERY small though

I took this photo so you can compare the size against my hand

(although, of course, it could be a normal sized strawberry with a giant hand!)

The bright red spot in the centre of the picture is a strawberry!  When they are hidden amongst leaves they are difficult to see but generally the bright red shows up, as we all know the eye goes straight to red.

This was something John Constable knew all too well as he would always put a spot of red 'somewhere' in his paintings

It's rather nice to see fruit growing in the wild and on a sunnier day I got a good close up

In this photo you can see the strawberries that have yet to ripen

I have done one or two sketches of them in my studio, some of which didn't turn out too well.  I'm not going to pretend that every sketch or painting works out well, I have as many 'for the bin' paintings as the next person -

These two are going in the bin

but this next one I quite liked

and this one

Oh...and we sampled a couple whilst on our walk....they tasted just like strawberries!

Dragonfly

On our recent trip to Plymouth we walked through to Guildhall Square from the Hoe.  So glad we did as we came across this lovely sculpture of a Dragonfly

Made of stainless steel it stands about 10 feet tall from water level to tip of the leaf

and, of course, I couldn't resist doing a sketch of it

The odd little stone

On one of our walks along the beach at Crow Point near Braunton I sat for a while sketching and found an odd little stone.  You know me, I had to do a sketch of it

I've added a photograph of it as well so you can see how small it is, and how unusual

it reminds me of a little hat.  I tend to pick up shells and driftwood from time to time but not stones - until I found this one

Willliam's a lucky boy and gets a lot of walks - later that day

we took him down to our local beach

and he had a good run around - he then likes to head into the sea to cool off

Cornwall

On a recent visit to Cornwall I had, of course, taken my sketchbook with me and my camera.  Sometimes it isn't always possible to sketch on location hence the camera comes in very handy to remind me of a particular scene, but most of the time I do now try to sketch en plein air

This was the case when we dropped down into the village of Cawsand.

There was an artist painting the view.
It was a cloudy day and he didn't stay
very long because of the light, but I was
glad to have captured him in my sketch.

Honeysuckle

Having said about Buttercups in my previous post I thought I should give some space for Honeysuckle.  I really would love for you to be able to smell this flower, but until they invent Perfume-a-blog we will have to settle for some photographs

 You can smell it before you see it, gorgeous

Buttercups

Buttercups - what a nice sounding plant.  (One of my recent posts was about Hogweed - not so nice sounding)  

The buttercups are growing everywhere here at the moment so it was inevitable that I would end up doing a post about them.  I've taken a couple of photos - as if we need to remind ourselves what they look like - but they are so nice and sunny and I would say 'a happy flower' (or is that just me getting poetical again!)

It's a job to see some of these because of the bracken 

and in my doodlings I've sketched them

At the top of this sketch I've added:

'When I was young we would put a buttercup under a friends chin to 

see if it reflected the colour, if it did it meant they liked butter!'

I wonder if kids still play this game - or has it been lost somewhere along the line

Hogweed in the Hedgerows

 Note: with Blogger offline for several hours this particular post was lost. I have now replaced it and hope I can remember my original photos etc.  I apologise to Mary C. Nasser who had kindly left a comment on my original post.

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A few weeks ago I noticed that the hogweed was starting to grow again in the verges

and they are now in flower

you can see that not all the flowers have turned white yet

and here's a close up
(the fly heard I was out with my camera and decided to get in on the act!)

 and, of course, I couldn't resist a quick sketch

Oddments

I guess we all end up with oddments of paper.  If  a painting has gone wrong and is destined for the bin then I tend to chop up the paper and use it as labels for gifts.  As they are only a portion of a failed painting they stand alone ok and look quite good. 

Using up oddments of plain paper also works in the same way - I cut them into strips and paint a little scene on them.  Sometimes it may only be one colour with no picture, just because I happen to like the colour.  They are ideal as bookmarks too and can always be tidied up and squared off neatly then laminated and given as a gift.

With this in mind I was playing with some oddments yesterday and ended up using my finger as a 'resist' on the paper.  I then painted over with Cobalt Blue watercolour and turned one into sheep and the other into robins.

I added these to Sketchbook Challenge - Can't Resist This!  They were a bit of fun only but I have eneded up with one or two comments about the idea and hopefully this will inspire others to have a go and use up their oddments of paper rather than throwing them away.

I've even turned a partial painting into a card - I added an outline to this sunflower and dotted on some tipex to liven it up

Garden Flowers

We are now seeing a lot more colour coming into our garden with flowers popping up here and there.  I went around the garden this morning taking a few photos which I thought I would share

- known as Lambs Ears - these leaves are soft and fluffy -

it rained over night and left droplets of water on the leaves

- Wild Geranium -

we get loads of this and end up having to take

some of it out before it takes over

one of the Cordyline's has sent out a flower for the first time

Poppies - these have managed to self seed into the edges of the path
but we don't mind as they look so nice when they flower

We've got a Fuchsia bush that is about 6ft tall, 

so I felt it could afford to lose one or two pieces for my vase

and, of course, I couldn't help but do a quick

sketch of them!