Thursday, June 24, 2021

Sketching Banksias into life

Banksias are a favourite native plant amongst many Australian artists.  Their amazing shapes, colours and textures inspires a lot of obsessional art making!

As well as discovering Banksias in the bushlands where I walk and ride, I grow them in my garden.  I love how their sculptural forms rise majestically above the other plants.  They command the attention of the various honeyeaters as well as the human-sort of visitors to my garden.

Banksia flowering on one of my walks.

The lines of yellow 
remind me of the segments of an orange.

And when the colourful show is over,
the pods remain.

One of my interpretations.  This is a snapshot from a concertina
artist book on Parchment paper, the watercolours I used on the paper
shine brightly like the banksias in flower.


Another Banksia artist book, this time on Kraft paper
using muted colours in my favourite combination
of blue and brown.


Another artist book, this time I played
with more intense colours,
and brought out some textures with
waxy pencils.  This one is also
on kraft paper.