Today's flower drawing (in progress)

I started this drawing last week, in the blistering heat, in my parents' back garden.  I'm lucky to have a mum who is a keen gardener, and so at the moment the garden is full of all sorts of really interesting flowers and plants.  I have no ideas about plants really, but I am fascinated by their forms...I really should learn their names.  Anyway I was particularly taken by the swooshing thing that looks like it has beans growing off it at the bottom of the drawing (I told you I'm clueless!), and I liked the circularity of this arrangement of plants. My session in the garden lasted a couple of hours but then the clouds came and it started to rain so I stopped and didn't return to the drawing until today.

Today the weather was also pretty nasty but luckily I had taken a photo of this arrangement the other day and decided to draw from the photo today.  I actually really enjoyed drawing from the photo, and actually for this kind of drawing, it might be better to draw from a photographic reference because you can actually use the dramatic light of the morning without having to worry that the sun will move gradually across the sky (yes, it does!)

This is how my drawing was looking a little while ago:

Looking at it as a little jpeg actually helps to see it, and I am really excited by how it is coming along.  At first I thought it might be interesting to just draw the bits that really interested me and leave the rest as the white of the paper, but now I can see in the bottom half that the depths and layers of all the foliage has a lovely rhythm about it.  Unfortunately the top page has just fallen out of my book! Which is really annoying but it means I have a good excuse to frame the drawing once it is done, if I can somehow fix the 2 leafs of paper together.

I had the idea that this might potentially become the basis of a wood carving - A relief carving made out of a better quality wood such as teak, that could be hung on the wall...or perhaps something a little more primitive wood-wise that I would gesso and paint once I had carved it.  This is totally new territory for me so I am having to read up on this new and unfamiliar subject every time I need a break from drawing or blogging!

Any ideas would be gratefully received, if someone happens to read this who knows about carving wood....cheers!

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