Making A Mark in 2007 - the plan...and an update

Munstead Wood - Summer Garden

8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've been having a review of where I've got to with my plan for 2007 and this post is by way of signalling my intention as to themes for projects in the next few months.

Somehow or other cacti collared Georgia O'Keeffe month and I haven't done as many flowers as I intended. However, the output by the end of the month will be huge so it's having a positive effect on my objective of producing more botanical macro artwork in 2007 - even if they are mostly cacti!

I referred back to my original plan as to what I wanted to do this year and I've decided that I need to do more about following my plan to pursue flower macros and gardens themes which are very relevant to my existing body of work (see links at end). So my current plan is to focus my efforts in the next few months as follows:

• July: focus on the theme of Flowers. This reverses the approach of previous months wheer the focus has been on individual artists. This time I was to extend my research and study various artists who draw/drew and paint/painted flowers. This will include on-line resources, resources in the art museums in London and visiting gardens to increase my stock of images (for the winter months). Some of the artists I have in mind at the moment are Georgia O'Keeffe (picking up from this month), Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Elizabeth Blackadder.
  
• August: focus on gardens. This will work best if I'm doing it when it's possible for me to visit additional gardens which are only open one or two days each year - such as Munstead Wood yesterday. I'll adopt the same approach as for flowers and look at various artists who have drawn and painted gardens.
• September / October: Monet This seems a logical progression since of course Monet painted gardens. My original plans were to focus on the following: broken colour, series paintings, approach to plein air painting, gardens, skies and water

I then want to fit in Turner (skies, water) and Degas (composition, series paintings, pastel techniques) before the end of the year.

People in the UK who want to follow the gardens theme this summer might want to take a look at the following sites:

• the National Trust and its Garden Highlights Many of the NT properties also have extensive gardens.
  
• the Royal Horticultural Society and the RHS gardens and the RHS garden finder
  
• The National Gardens Scheme. The National Gardens Scheme Garden Finder enables a search of more than 3,000 gardens around the UK which open for charity. This last weekend I found the NGS website to be extraordinarily slow and very annoying - so much so that I ended up e-mailing NGS to tell them about it. It struck me very much as a site which has grown way beyond its server capacity or bandwidth availability for times when most people are doing searches as it was just getting stuck all the time. I had a very nice and very prompt response from the Chief Executive and hopefully the problem will be sorted soon. (Note - it's much faster this morning!) In the meantime - if you encounter similar problems I'd recommend either buying the Yellow Book and/or don't wait to do searches at times when it's likely to be busy - like the weekend!

The Pergola, Munstead Wood
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

My sketches are from the visit I made yesterday (in the rain) to the garden at Munstead Wood in Surrey, the former home of Gertrude Jekyll and a pivotal focus of her collaboration with the architect Edwin Lutyens. Jekyll was a painter whose eyesight failed and she switched to painting in colour in her flower beds instead and became a much revered and very successful garden designer as a result. I'm going to be posting these images with a longer description of the visit plus some photos on Travels with a Sketchbook later today. [Update: now posted here]

I just wish it to be noted that I drew the top one and sketched in some colour one-handed whilst my other hand held an umbrella over me and the sketchbook! ;)

Links: My website - Pastels and Pencils

• Houses and Gardens
• Flowers
• Small Works - Floral and Botanical
  
• Drawings - Flowers and Botanical