TIM BAKER

Over the last few years I’ve been forcing myself to do more flower studies. Like buildings, flowers are not something I come to naturally, but they appear in the foreground of my landscapes so I needed to be better at depicting them. (Unlike people who also rarely appear in my plein air work, a landscape with no foliage in the foreground just looks odd).

This year, along with my fascination with the darling buds of may (or spring) I’ve been depicting the many thousands of bulbs planted along Queen’s Promenade by the Friends there, as well as the apple blossom in the garden as requested by John, following the flower studies I did in the garden in 2021 of lilies, ragwort and cape daisies.

I am arranging these according to when they approximately flower in the year – the first being daffodils which like crocuses (crocusii?) and bluebells can be seen poking through snow!

Might seem strange to say ‘I don’t enjoy doing these flower studies and then post them publicly but it is like my still life pieces – to me they are purely technical exercises with very little emotional attachment. Also I find flowers really fiddly and hard to draw. So that’s also why several of these are from 2021 and have not seen the light of day until now.

I did like ‘The Conversation’ since I could sneak a couple conspiratorially talking in the top right hand corner, and the daffodils did seem to be chatting to each other. Also it was the first run-through of the new Inktense paint sets I bought myself for my birthday cheaply. I love the bench the Friends have recovered as it’s set back from the rest, a good place to observe and draw. The Tulips one was also painted there.

Here is the aforementioned Tulips, which was an exercise in using the Koh-I-Noor document black ink in a fountain pen…I had used it like that a few years before again with a study of daffodils but I found actually getting a dark line (or a nice green) with the Koh-I-Noor quite hard. With a brush or dip-pen it’s good, but fountain pens don’t produce enough ink and the ink just disappears in a wash.

Also another early Inktense paint set piece. Not having a good earthy dark brown in that set (I have since cut up some of my Inktense blocks into a pan to add some) meant mixing reds and purples for the earth.

As mentioned for some reason John wanted me to paint the apple blossoms this year which usually appear in mid spring. He actually wanted me to paint them in the distance, but typically did not tell me that so got this close-up study. It took two attempts as the light typically went as I was starting the watercolour, the drawing having been a totally unenjoyable slog.

I got quite angry afterwards with it (and being told after all that pain it wasn’t what was wanted didn’t help either)…as did a second sketchbook piece I did on the second day more like what John wanted…that went totally wrong and you will never see that. I would have destroyed it bar the fact it has another of these pieces on the other side! Not often do I get that angry with my work…

I originally weirdly had the background as purple/pinks, but that was a bad idea and wasn’t what the background was – the hedge and the rubbish bins (I was tempted to put them in), and provided no contrast to the white light purple/blue of the blossoms.

Not sure this works tbh, I like the Japanese nature of the style/drawing but not as a delicate as needed but I don’t have that sort of zen patience. At all. Which is a bit of a problem with botanical pieces.

This view of Cape Daisies (Osteospermum) which John planted in the garden is *checks records* at least a year old because I am pretty sure it was hanging around for a while before I scanned and edited it. I’d need to dig it out to make sure, but I think this was on the thin Fabriano Artistico paper which was unusually for me smooth paper, like the Rosapina. I relate this and the slightly later Lilies in my mind as the same thing, dip pen and watercolour in the garden.

This is actually less ‘blue’ as my scanner seems to glom onto Ultramarine and make it more intense than it is..I’ve actually stopped using French Ultramarine pure for that reason and only use it in mixes.

I noticed when I was drawing the apple blossom that the Cape Daisies are already flowering.

Not sure what flowers are these, but it’s a recent piece so they flower in late April/May. Again a study in Inktense paints – not sure about the background but it’s always a hard thing when you have multiple flowers – do you draw them all? Some? And do you let them float on the page in white or do you put the background in?

Again, like the apple blossoms, playing with tertiary mixing and using purples/greens to push things back into the background. Maybe less subtly here, not sure that works but with Inktense it’s permanent, once it’s there it can’t be removed unlike watercolour. It had a much more green/blue background which was too much of one colour, so I layered over the crimson to make it more ‘earthy’.

This study of Ragwort growing at Ham Lands is either early August or late July 2021, and one of the last entries in the Etchr sketchbook. I like the background in this- a suggestion of the other plants without drawing them. It was a pretty hot day, I remember sitting there and getting attacked by insects. I also did a painting of the cowslip in the panoramic watercolour sketchbook – that was less successful.

Ragwort used to be more of a rarity since anywhere that grazes cattle ripped it out as being poisonous to them (with little to no proof) – ignoring the fact that those animals tend to avoid it and there are species of moth, bees and insects that depend on it. It seems nowadays there is more of a laissez faire attitude to not spraying pesticides everywhere to nuke ragwort, and leaving it to grow unless it’s become a problem. And quite rightly so – it’s not an invasive weed, it’s a native plant.

And this is partly why I’m a little meh about flower studies in general – there is a lot of invasive ideology about what is a ‘good’ flower and what is a ‘bad’ flower or weed? Someone has decided that sunflowers are beautiful but dandelions are not, or that daffodils are hosts of gold but some buddleja are weeds. As someone who grew up in Surrey I see Rhododendron as weeds, as many have escaped gardens there and become real non-native pests that nuke the soil and shade out any other native plants.

As you might have guessed from my cliff paintings, I am happiest with nature that hasn’t been molested by humans! I find raw unedited nature is quite often better than any garden or park.

And finally in late August 2021 I did this large piece of the lilies. I planted these and regularly defend them from the bright red Lily Beetle that will wreck them, so I find them beautiful and wanted to document them. I don’t really like the large version because I kind of screwed up the top flower, but I think the rest is pretty good.