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I am a third of the way through my #100daysproject of painting 100 things growing in my garden.
Any sustained effort on a project has highs and lows; I have had days of lag and disinterest, days where time is just too short and I fall behind and days of joy and peace found painting in quiet spots.
Mostly it’s been a good discipline. A bit too time consuming on some days.
But I’m loving having a little book recording my garden growing.
And above all it’s forced me to identify and name all the plants I’m recording which has been very enlightening and informative.
On with the next!
On June 1st I decided I’d commit to doing a 100days project. There were a few reasons for this:
For Christmas I got given a seed advent calendar which has been a lot of fun but also a lot of work – 25 different kinds of annuals to grow has kept me on my toes in the greenhouse. But it also means I have a lot of lovely plants to enjoy.
I had also enjoyed my residency at Winterbourne H&G so much that I had decided to try and document my own garden in a similar matter. However as is often the case when things are at home, it seems harder to paint and draw in my own garden. I have found time to do some studies and textile work but it doesn’t document the changes as I’d hoped because I can’t keep up the frequency of work needed.
Lastly, I’m back working at MAC (hurrah) and when I’m focussing on delivery I often find my own creativity takes a backseat.
So for all those reasons I started 100days of drawing/painting something in my own garden.
It doesn’t need to be finished or good and it can be quick or slow and I’m also finding I automatically apply several styles to my work but I’m not over-thinking it – just doing it, noticing and letting it be whatever it is.
Here’s the first six days.
Just popping in with a few catch-up pieces from my residency at Winterbourne House and Garden.
It’s been hard to catch a good time to be out painting because of the sudden changes in weather and temperature. One solution has been to work in miniature, although these paintings still take quite a time.
Ā 
Everything is growing very fast and I’m trying my best to catch a little bit of it all as there’s no way I can do all of it justice. The Auriculas have long been a favourite of mine so it was nice to capture them.
This little guy had to be caught on canvas having visited me whilst sketching one day and had a good long proper chat and even hopped around the side of me as if to see what I was doing.
Ā Protea_Ā© Claire_Leggett
A little painting inspired by the beautiful South African Protea via my local Marks and Spencers!
I’ve saved my favourite place for last –Ā Frigiliana.
Back in July 2015 we had a week in Granada (which you’ve already seen lots of here) andĀ then we had anotherĀ week by the coast.
Frigiliana is inland and was a short drive from where we were staying.
It just clicked with me – it’s very small but so cute and artistic with lots of creative industries like pottery, weaving and painting and the nicest people.
I might even retire there one day if I can learn some Spanish!
Frigiliana by Night Ā© Claire Leggett
This piece was the demo I began when I taught The Spotted Dog workshop (here) which I’ve finished now
Well that’s it folks for my show-and-tell work from last years holiday – hope you enjoyed š
Everything has a season so they say and this year has not been my season for the garden (poor neglected thing).
However some past efforts continue to pay dividends – thank you Roses, that white weed thingy, the cow-parsley plant, my patio pots and of course theĀ Alchemilla Mollis.
I snipped a few things I could find the other day Ā – all pleasingly lime green, green and yellow (thank you garden for self-theming the colours) and popped them into my 25 pence bargain jug for an afternoons play with the paints.
Hope you’re enjoying our UK Bank Holiday weekend – but home or abroadĀ I hope you’re enjoying a little tea and cake where-ever you are.
I bought a little scrap bag of Liberty fabrics that have spurred me on to use a more pastel colour palette. I’ve been relying heavily on myĀ Peobe masking fluidĀ to protect areas of the painting as I was going (see 2 and 4 above) Can’t recommend the stuff enough – I even bravely used it on finished areas and it didn’t bring anything off the painting surface with it when it was removed. The hardest part was not leaning in and eating the fondant fancy!
Ā© Claire Leggett Ā Tea and Cake
It’s been a great year for tulips in the garden.
I re-subscribed to a magazine and got some Sarah Raven bulbs as a freebie.
And they have been beautiful – big, blowsy flowers – interesting colours and shapes. Apricot Beauty was the first to fully flower last week.
It hurt A LOT to cut three of the nine stems to bring in and paint.
But here they are immortalised š
Ā© Claire Leggett Ā Ā Apricot Beauty
I am just back from a tres blustery walk in the woods with Lottie and ready to share a little sunshine here because it is just so crazy miserable out there today.
Here’s proof that the sun did shine for a moment yesterday – honest!
These are close up’s of some bright, sunny flowers I’ve been painting for greetings cards – the kind you find where there is sunshine to grow them – remember sunshine? warmth? being able to walk along without fear of that creaking branch actually snapping off and falling on your head?!
When I got back to my desk, my inbox sent me a little sunshine too, with news of a , an invite to apply for a craft fair and this quote from Good Reads :
Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be
Good advice Mr Lincoln – I am now ignoring the hail stones beating on the skylight window and going back to a happy, sunny painty place š
Over the last two weeks I have been to-ing and fro-ing with this painting here. I have wanted to capture some snowdrops for a while but there isĀ such a short window between buying them and getting them painted that before you blink they’ve dried up.
I’ve also had these ‘snooty cats’ for a while now – a car boot sale find – they just appeal to me and I like their slightly haughty air.
The background was some off cuts of our bedroom wallpaper which I never tired of until this painting.
So I set this up fairly confidently that the colours and compositions were going to work and set to getting those snowdrops done quickly.
A few days solid painting and I’d finished…so I thought! I like to prop paintings up somewhere outside of the studio and live with them for a while – it gives a bit of perspective on the finished article and for good reason because as we lived with this, we could all see that those birds were really distracting. Back to the drawing board.
I carefully mopped them out and painted in using the background colours which were (luckily) still left on the palette – hurray for watercolours. Cue a bit more living with it and it still wasn’t clicking. i decided that the background paper, beautiful as it is, was just not the right pattern for this set up because it was fighting for attention.
So I took a radical step which took a few days of building up to, and masked the whole of the foreground and then washed the entire background out and began again.
Scary stuff! I can continue to recommend Peobe masking fluid is all I can say.
I should also say that the paper was stretched on a board so even though it got a good soaking, once it dried out, is was tight and flat again.
Then I painted in a plain grey background colour and masked in a simple, more regular pattern which I then painted over again for a two-tone finish. And I. was. sick. of.it!
Ā© Claire Leggett “Snooty Cats”
So here is the final metamorphosis of this painting. I’m moving on š
