Our Garden Continued, Front Garden

Thank you so much for all of your kind comments about our garden, I thought this week I would show you our front garden and a couple of different views of our back garden and atrium, which is an indoor eating area shown above.

Here is a small display area I put in the back to display all of the old rusty gardening tools I found that used to belong to John's and my parents. I love rusty old things, there past and especially for their gorgeous patina. I love the red spade, if you click and look at it closely it has the most beautiful colour variations. The two old doors we found abandoned one year.

You might notice in the second photo above all of the doors, there are six large doors and two windows that open into the atrium. The atrium is two stories heigh with large sky lights and a water feature. It has two balconies inside that over look the eating area and was built between the addition we added and the older part of the house, lovely area to sit.

This is my favorite place to sit in the summer in the back. The next photos are towards the front of the house.

You can see the rock garden area in the fourth photo I did out front last year by the pink azalias, I put in small heather,  heucheras, euphorbias and ground covers. The azaleas were all overgrown with other plants that we pulled out, so much fun to redo areas. All the green with yellow flowers are the kale which has gone to seed that we have been eating all winter, nice flowers.  I planted the area by the drive way last year as well. We had new tiles put on our front steps and entrance so you can see new thymes and sedums I've put on the side path to the entrance and around the frog, by next year hopefully it will be all green. The rest of the front yard is a mound with rhodos and grass. I hope to show photos when all the flowers are out in the summer, if I ever get my dahlias planted, lol, hopefully tomorrow and next week. If I say it maybe I will do it?

Our Garden

Each morning, rain or shine I like to get out to see our backyard garden and do a garden walk. After filling the bird feeder I thought I would take some photos to share. Last year I really started taking more of an interest in gardening during the time I took off from my minis business and I replanted many areas that had been overgrown and neglected. I had a wonderful time and this year, it even more exciting because I can see how all my babies (new plants) have grown.
I'm starting at the studio back door.

This small area I call the meditation area where I planted sedum and other ground covers.

I planted lots of sedum, thyme and ground covers around the stone stairs.

John loves gardening too and you can see his vegetable plantings and the ones that have gone through the year. Last year I became very interested in having vegetables from our garden all year so I planted very late crops, I did get tired  of having so many green vegetables during the winter but they are very healthy, lol. Our squashes were my favorite so we have planted a lot more this year. If we could just get the slugs to leave them alone it would help! You can see one of the studio windows, I've really been enjoying watching the bird feeder in one of the apple trees while I work.

I love this new area, we had a huge flax plant that was not doing well so we removed it and I moved a few rocks to create a small rock garden with sedums and my favorite heuchera called Marmalade. The wooly thyme is really filling in around the walking stones already.

This area didn't have anything going on so I built up the rocks and added heurcheras and sedums. The reason I chose these plants is because they look great all year round and are very hardy. There are also tiny sassafras that are in bloom now, I love them with their tiny mini blooms.

This area just had some old lavender that was over grown and had died, we have about five other lavender plants on the other side of the path which are done really doing well. This was a really fun area to work on and I love the way the sedums have done so well and the wooly thyme has filled in around the steps. I found the concrete chimney liners for two dollars each and I think they have made very nice planters. There is a delphinium in another container just poking it's head around the corner.

Here you can see the chintz thyme with really goes with the pinky/mauve wallflower.

Morning dew drops on the hostas.

Must get out and plant the dahlias, my neighbor has all 450 of hers in already!!

Miniature Transparent Watercolour Workshop 5, quarter scale painting too!

 

For this workshop I would like explain how if finished the painting shown below as well as start a quarter scale painting. 

Above I'm showing an example of how I have used some of my miniature paintings in settings. This room box was a workshop I did with Brooke Tucker. You can also see some of my china painted porcelain pieces on that are on the right side of the Gift Shop room and shown on the left. I  find china painting very similar to watercolour painting except you fire the layers. I'm sorry there is a glare from some of the plastic I used to make the paintings look like they had glass in front of them.

 

 

Before I was finished with this painting I deviated from being completely transparent, this hasn't happened to me very often but the white flowers really needed to look as though they were on top of the paper rather than being the white of the background so I did use zinc white to accent the flowers. I have to admit as well that I didn't leave enough white paper showing through for the flowers. The flowers as part of the white background just didn't work either, they needed more emphasis. Once I was finished adding the final details I removed the tape. I found that I hadn't put the tape on quite straight so I straightened the painting with a light pencil line and added a bit of paint to the top right area. It ended up looking straight, really important for such a small scale, especially for framing. I was happy with the finished painting but did feel I overworked some areas and they weren't really as transparent and light as I would have liked.

Quarter scale version of this original.

First I scanned in the picture and figured out what size it would be in quarter scale and reduced it. If you would like to try it, here is the original scan again for one twelfth scale again and a quarter scale scan. Just right click, save and print it out. You can see below that I have done a simple outline sketch on my paper. Graphite paper doesn't work very well in this small size. If you are just stepping in at this point to try this smaller painting you might like to have a look at my previous workshop notes to see my choices of paints and brushes.

 

Above I have started doing light transparent washes, the graphite was starting to colour the paint so I erased the pencil lines at this point. There is usually no problem erasing pencil or graphite lines as long as the painting isn't wet and you use an art gomme eraser. I'm using more paints for this painting because a lighter touch is needed with more paint colours rather than glazes as in the previous painting.

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I found for very tiny paintings I have to paint with my water and paints much closer to my work. The finer brushes don't hold as much paint and the smaller areas don't absorb the water as well. This is as far I have come with the painting now. I'm hoping to start working on a photo for the next workshop and show you my finished quarter scale painting.

Perhaps I will use this bowl of fruit I took a photo of a couple of weeks ago.

I've taken some photos this week I thought you might like to see.

This was really unusual and I was thrilled to get a few photos of an otter rubbing it's back on the beach and   up in the park while we were walking along the beach in Oak Bay.

This photo I took early one morning on one of our walks, loved the sun just breaking though the cloouds and the reflections on the bench.

Took this photo today of the Rhodos in our front yard with primulas, they have been amazing.

A couple more of my miniature watercolour paintings, That largest painting is 1 and 1/8" in height. I did the painting of the girl with her doll from an antique black and white photo. Fun to translate the black and white into colour. 

Photo Challenge

I was sent a photo challenge by Sandra Morris of Tales from a Toy Maker Sandra is always up to something interesting. Apparently I had to go to my photo files and pick file number 4 and then photo number 4, publish it here and explain a bit about the photo. It was really quite fun to see what photo would come up. The photo turned out to be 20090710_4. I took the photo in our back yard in July because I love the translucent look of the poppy petals, they were amazing this year.

Now the second part of my challenge is to pass it on to 4 other blogs to see what photos they choose. I would love all the bloggers to do this challenge but I'm only to pick 4.

I would like send this photo challenge to the following 4 bloggers.
Kat from Little Thoughts from an Average Mind
Kim from Flowers and Art
Linda from Une Petite Folie
Cathy from The Fabulous Farmhouse

When I just looked at this photo enlarged I could see our cat Slippers in the photo, she really blended in well. She is getting older and is such a dear. Therefore I have another challenge for anyone looking at the photo to find Slippers!!!

Mini Hugs, Jean