In assignment five I have decided to use my garden flowers as my inspiration inspired by natures changing colours the atmosphere it can create. In nature there are many interesting shapes and textures and with my research I tried various media from pastel crayons, watercolours with black ink to create my drawing.
My garden is a special place for me it is an extension of my house area created almost like a room itself but outside. Its a special place thinking about lost ones in your life, its a place for occasions and enjoy family.
I love nature and flowers from the ground seeing them grow from a seed and watching emerge into a living plant. As reflecting on life when you see things grow develop and obviously die which is similar to the human life.
I started to explore different ways of drawing flowers using different media and exploring different ways of drawing and mark making to create an inspiring drawing. At the beginning of this course the first exercise was to express feelings by the use of mark making. I felt in this last assignment I had learnt on my journey with the exercises the different mark making and how it can create different images by the way we put these marks down on the paper. The textures that can be created by the different lines we make by use of colour as well.
When looking at flowers I became more aware of how flowers are used in different things from design to sculpture to designs on stamps, fabric design and many other ways. Even on a visit to Cambridge I noticed in the pavements brass flowers were inlaid in the pavement stones. While taking a photo of these a local person explained the meaning of these brass flowers, they had been played in the pavements to remember someone that died they lead all the way to the gates of one of the colleges. I would not have known that if it had not been for the kind lady that explained it to me. Sometimes we all look ahead and sometimes by looking down or above we observe other things around the place we are in.
Flowers are used to celebration in marriage as the bride normal in english weddings will carry a bunch of flowers. Some brides have flowers that they like in there and colour is an important part of the display in the bunch.
Flowers are also used on coffins and I know on my dad had just lilies but on my mums she had exotic flowers to symbolism of the many places she had traveled and lived in . Flowers all have latin names and even some names can link back to a flower I know Susan is a lily.
So there is a lot of meaning to flowers in life and death. Many artist have used flowers for their inspiration from the early dutch painters to Van Gough with his sunflowers to Monet with his study of water lilies.
Even flowers when dry can still look beautiful take a simple rose and slowly watch it dry .Many flowers have healing benefits that help body and mind, the scents that they produce can have healing properties on our bodies. Lavender has a calming effect which I have in my garden a wonderful plant that both bees and butterflies love.
My final assignment is at A3 size with the use of watercolours and fine black pen for mark making. I tried to capture the atmosphere of the section of the garden and it made me observe the ever changing effect that the plants have when the flowers died as well. The garden is therefore a constant changing picture in different times and with the effect of the different light from the weather .
Over the time doing all these exercises and assignments I have been more aware of my environment. The people around me and watching and sketching what I see. I have always liked drawing over the years but felt I benefited from the exercises and assignments, research into other artist as well as opened my eyes to other artist work around.
sue white drawing 