Colour from the season - Pepper green

Sorry if anyone has a soft spot for peppers! this sweet Italian variety namely Corno Rosso is a bit strung up. Not enough sunshine in North Devon this year to turn it even slightly red - even in the greenhouse (I know the feeling!)

As green is set to be hugely influential in the design world in the next year or two (according to trend forecasters Global Colour Research), I thought I'd make a few colour notes of my own as a useful 'Greens' reference...

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the Season - Lavender green

...dilly dilly
(or, those are the words that spring into my mind next to Lavender green!).

The two main shades of green sampled from the Lavender leaves in my garden. A simple notebook page - and very calming to draw...

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Planet Rose Red

Time to change the subject. Enough of dead things, at least for the time being and a focus on something splendidly alive.

Walking with Chip and daydreaming on Planet Sam a couple of days ago, the sheer beauty of this late flowering rose brought my attention back to earth.

Researching what it might be, I came across names such as High Flier, Crimson Sky and Crimson Cascade (Crimson Cascade the most likely match by the way), but somehow attaching such pedestrian names as these to this incredible, slightly frost burned, deeply saturated crimson red rose  - just spoiled the romance of it.  So I've called it Planet Rose red...

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Jay blue

This handsome Jay measured a foot long from head to tail! A member of the Crow family yet so much more colourful. Still warm when I found it, its eyes were open and had an unexpected intensely pale blue iris.

Had we been driving along that stretch of road a few minutes earlier or later, it would almost certainly not have been there. In the short time it took to pull over, a Crow tried to carry him off lifting him out of the ditch into the path of oncoming traffic. So, a rare opportunity to study and make a note of the truly extraordinary colours that I found in the plumage of the Jay...

These exquisitely drawn prints by the French artist Edouard Traviés are in Treriefe House, Cornwall. I saw them when I exhibited my work there in August during Cornwall Design Fair and found them inspirational.

Another Traviés image - of a Jay (c. 1854).

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook

Colour from the Season - Great Tit yellow

Not all my colours have been exactly seasonal. I've drawn feathers, lichen, shells etc. when I've discovered interesting and beautiful forms and colours and thought them worth recording. My dad loved birds and often encouraged me to draw them. Since his death earlier this year, by chance, I've been given a number of dead birds to draw. While it's sad that these birds have died, it's an opportunity to draw and document them and learn about their anatomy through studying them, which would be impossible in quite the same way from a photograph.

This is a Great Tit, sent to me last week by a friend who found it in their studio, quite a bit bigger and more aggressive looking than a Blue Tit. I drew him last week before going for a short holiday (camper vanning!) in St. Ives. On the last stretch of road before arriving back home today, lay a dead Jay...

The first pencil and acrylic sketch.



















The second (one handed) sketch.

finished second sketch - again acrylic and pencil.

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...from my seasonal Colour sample notebook.