I think I
have missed the most of everything! But that doesn’t matter since I’m mostly
interested in the flowers when they start to fade!
All the
grass starts to yellow, the cloves are brown furry little balls, the thistles are
starting to spread their seeds, the deer’s are fully grown and not afraid of
the humans and it was to hot even for the mountibikers and occasionall runners.
So I had the place almost for myself.
I picked
some Iridaceae sibirica seed heads and a tiny branch from the rose bush to take
home, and later that day I did these sketches.
It was
first on the third attempt whit the iris I found the right colour. Three (at
least) layers of Burnt Sienna, carefully lifting out the highlights. Then I
mixed Brunt Sienna with a little Prussian blue, the mix was thick and reminded
of chocolate sauce – and with that I finished the whole thing. The first
attempts I ended with a thin layer of Permanent Rose, but with this I didn’t
felt it was necessary.
The
rosehips are just a rough sketch, I had planned to do more with them but the
next day they were to wrinkled.
After doing
these sketches of the seed pods I jumped in on a full scale painting, which I’m
very happy with!
My walk over
the hill
This is
what it look like from afar, my Dump.
In winter time it is a ski slope and the
installations on the top are the ski lift – but I think it looks like an art
installation from this angel. You can walk up that way, there are a path
because many others walk and run there.
But I prefer the “road” on the other
side, mostly at path that too, but it is possible to drive something 4-wheel
(or ride a mountinbike) up that way.
The path is
monitored by one or two crows, they live nearby and like to sit by this post.
Today was a very hot day and the crow just turned its head a bit when I passed
beneath. Just to keep sure I wasn’t up to any fishy business.
Along the
side of the path up the hill grows Giant hogweed.
Lots of them …
I don’t
know how, but someday I must draw and paint them, preferably when they have withered
and look like this one. But so far they simply are to big. I have a graphit
drawing going on of a part of a stem, when you look close they are very
intricate and fun to draw. But it has to take its time.
On the top
they had mowed the grass, but had left some Tanacteum vulgare (Tansy) by the
sign that points out the mountinbike path. Since I had pushed my bike up the
hill, I think it counts as a mountinbike …? Or not. I can go downhill without
problem anyway … :-)
The rest of
the area looks like this. Most of the flowers are over, the clovers are just
brown little balls and not much else is flowering. The place is windy and
exposed to all sorts of weather so I think that affects the growing habit and
make the period of blooming flowers shorter.
I started
to examine the few rose bushes which are growing on the southwest side, and
they had a few flowers left. They looked very fragile and I left them on the
bushes.
On the west
side I found a number of bushes I never had seen before, I took a twig home
and found out that it was a Cotoneaster horizontalis. Never heard about it before, I don’t have a
garden of my own, but after some Google searches I found out that it is very
common ….
This is the
Dump at its best, anything pops up here!