Article

Hello and welcome.

I decided I will take you trough the process of making one of my “Stories from the garden” drawings.

I always take pictures during the process, because I noticed that looking at a picture, rather then the drawing (or looking at it’s image in the mirror), makes you see what is wrongly placed and what needs to be added or taken away.

In this particular situation, this is not a finished drawing. I feel is too busy and too much detail, and I will soften it later with the use of watercolours.

The inspiration.

I visited this beautiful place in Budesti - Maramures, just for a day of relaxing and basically planning to find a nice place in the country side, sit down and paint.

To my surprise, our rented cottage was exactly it.

Not only that the hosts were so friendly, but their pets were even more.

How absolutely stunning is this?

These wonderful people from “Maramuresul istoric”, took 2 old houses from the nearby villages, and moved them piece by piece to this new location to make them their home. And since it turned out to be a thing of beauty, smartly decided to share it with the rest of us that want to travel.

I loved my stay. So much that in fact I felt I need to leave something behind as appreciation. And what else could I leave but one of my drawings.

Sitting under the trees on a bench, with a spring flowing behind me. So peaceful.

All of this hard work was supervised with great interest by Bruno and a bunch of cats.

He was literally sleeping on the cat!

Not before he presented his belly for a good rub.

And this little one, was following everywhere

and I had to be careful not to step on her

With all this distraction, is not a surprise it was hard to fulfil my promise towards our host lady who wanted to immortalise her cottage.

I am humbled by her compliments; however the drawing is far from a copy.

But I have to admit, the work conditions were hard. Curious cats and Bruno, and the sun that was shining so bright it almost made it hard to see details.

Now I do recall I told you I had all the intention to paint.

And I have, a little just before reaching our destination. But we will speak about this some other time, when I will actually finish that painting.

But when I got to this place, the garden in full bloom absolutely stole the show.

I mean, I come from England!

Romanians have vegetable gardens and here and there some flowers, rarely I have flower gardens in my country, let alone a semi-wild paradise that I am sure can compete to some English gardens. Is true, I am on a voyage to discover Romania, so I am sure I might be surprised later.

So I took a few pictures, and I just knew I had to do another story.

I call them stories from the garden and is a collection of drawings I’ve done over the past years.

Although not all of them are in fact inspired by real flowers, they all have something organic in them and yes, they contain flowers in a form or another.

And let’s be honest: it sounds pretty good. Stories from the garden.

I started this drawing during my visit, but I had no time to finish it.

So one of these mornings I woke up and decided that “today I don’t want to adult” and set myself up in the garden.

With my own lovely assistants.

SPUD  &  PICKLE

They roam around in the garden, Spud mainly under the table trying to show me he is the top bunny, growling and trying to bite if I don’t behave and sometimes nudging me to pet him.

But they behaved. Mostly

Ignorance is a bliss.

I look at my paper and trace and select colours and test them on a separate paper.

Here, I start by combining elements from different pictures. Initially I use pencil, then re-trace with markers, or ink. I don’t try to be very precise. Is good to use reference pictures sometimes, because it helps you place that symmetry that nature has.

And I keep adding elements and try to create something cohesive,

And when I do a mistake….most of the time I go with it. Sometimes when I am lucky, I can find some way to disguise that, mainly by adding more shading or covering it up with something. But I will probably just leave it as it is. If at the end it will not bother me anymore, then most people will not see it.

And if they do and they are bothered by it, I couldn’t have fooled them in the first place.

Is supposed to be fun.

And it keeps growing. This one, bigger and bigger, and busier.

Sometimes is better to stop.

It is now in the evening and is getting chilly.

The page is covered.

I find it more and more difficult to find things to add.

That’s when I start wondering if I have overdone it.

And we take some pictures. And yeah…. It seems that I have too many elements to focus on.

Sure, if you look only at small areas, I feel is very pretty. But per ensemble looks busy and not so harmonic.

This effect is something intentional. The hyperfocus . When you look at it from the distance, is like a mass of colours, and the closer you get, the more you see. In every corner or place you focus your eye, you can find a different painting. You can cut out several, just in this one drawing.

But sometimes is just busy.

E voila!

I am now thinking to paint on it with watercolours. Do not despair. Watercolours and ink work wonders together, so is all good.

I am not sure yet. I will sleep on it for some time.

Until then, this is it.  The inspiration, the process and the madness behind it.

See you later!

Gabi

https://www.booking.com/hotel/ro/maramuresul-stravechi.ro.html