Taranaki Garden Festival 2022 (2 of 2)

 

Here's the second one that I did on the garden festival weekend but only just decided to watercolour it too. It was a breezy day and I found myself at this picnic area overlooking a stream that was out of the wind. After sketching this one, I noticed that this garden had a place where you could get scones with jam and cream. Will draw for food!

Taranaki Garden Festival 2022 (1 of 2)

I had seen that Theory Food was setting up a pop-up cafe in one of the gardens for the GardenFest. Of course I had to go and try all the cakes. While I was there, I hammered out a sketch too. I just used a pen, on location. Later, after it was sitting in my sketchbook for a while, I decided to give it the watercolour treatment on a rainy weekend.

Jury Garden

This is a sketch from one of the gardens that was in the Garden Festival. It still seems intact after the crowds returned home.

Lockdown Garden Art

Exercise this weekend - to sketch some of our garden art

Taranaki Gardens

Taranaki just had multiple simultaneous garden festivals. After looking through the programmes and maps, I decided to visit some at random entrants' properties after I grabbed my watercolours.

HAMILTON GARDENS

A few days in Hamilton so visited the Gardens . Each section themes a country. Well done and a nice day out .

PUKEMARA GARDEN

Alan Morris'  garden , PUKEMARA. Alan is one of the Taranaki Sketchers and offered us the chance to draw in his  New Plymouth garden - see it in the upcoming 2018  Taranaki Garden Festival 

Fresh Onions.

Lovely fresh oinions picked from my garden yesterday. Good enough to draw! This was meant to be a quick drawing. I didn't quite manage it!
Colour pencil.

Tupare Garden Market

New Plymouth organised a garden market set up at Tupare Garden. For those that don't know the place, there's this reasonably large old house set on this manicured hillside. Once a large residence, this park now makes a pretty good location for country market stalls, food and music. From my perch under a tree, I could sketch people from above while listening to the different musicians. There was one who was singing current popular music in a slow and jazzy style. A mellow lounge singer version of Daft Punk's Get Lucky still pops into my head from time to time.

Puka Tree in the Rain.

Today some of the group were away or couldn't come, plus it was a very wet day. So the task was sketch wherever you are, whatever you are doing and then post to the blog.

This is my "Puka Tree in the Rain" as I looked out my conservatory window.

Shadowing Venus: Pacific Adventures of Joseph Banks.

Today we went and had a look at this exhibition at Puke Ariki.
Aboard the Endeavor with Captain James Cook were Joseph Banks, scientist Daniel Solander and artist Sydney Parkinson.
The exhbition includes 46 framed prints from the Florilegium, plus four actual specimens of pressed flowers and leaves collected by Joseph Banks and fellow botanists on the HMS Endeavor in the late 1700's.

Banks' Florilegium Volume: XXII
Plate No: 452
Current Binolmial: Fushia excorticata
Banks/Solander: Agapanthus calcyfloris
Common Name: Native Fuschia
Maori Name: Kotukutuku/Konini

Here is my Sketch:

 

Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacluar

Peranakan Lights installed at the Brooklands Lawn in New Plymouth's Pukekura Park.

We all went in different directions this Saturday. Jackie went to Honnor's Farm Museum. Paul and Maurice went to Hurworth Cottage and Eileen and Myself sat on Brooklands Lawn and Sketched the Peranakan Lights. Later we all met at the Kiosk in Pukekura Park.

Granny Bonnets - Aquilegia

The columbine, or Aquilegia canaensis, is part of the buttercup family and considered to be one of the most popular wildflowers for its beauty, history and various meanings. When found in the wild in the Rocky Mountains, the columbine flower is blue-petaled, while in eastern North America it is red; various colors are grown commercially. Five- or seven-petaled with spur-like flowers, the columbine symbolizes characteristics that range from foolishness to innocence.

Here are some of the meanings I found:

Foolishness

• Giving a woman a columbine flower is considered bad luck, as they are a symbol of foolishness. Known to have five petals in the wild, the columbine flower was said to relate to foolishness because of its physical resemblance to a jester's five-pronged cap.

Innocence and the Holy Spirit

• The columbine flower is also symbol of innocence. The fallen spurs of the columbine flower resemble the Virgin Mary's shoes, which were worn on her visits to see Elizabeth. According to legend, Mary's shoes caused the columbine flower to spring up beneath her, symbolizing her innocence. The fallen petals also resembled tiny doves, which are a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and the seven petals of the cultivated columbine flower represent the Holy Spirit's seven gifts.
  
  
  

  

  
  

What better way to spend an afternoon than to sit in my garden drawing Granny Bonnets! I'm quite proud of these ones, they're large vibrant and tall.

My Daughter's Garden

My daughter has a very prolific garden all in pots, and I have spent many a happy day pottering in it.

My Kowhai Tree - Jackie.

It was a beautiful day today so I decided to sit in my garden and sketch. The colour of the flowers in my Kowhai tree against the blue of the sky was spectacular. I tried an experiment and used only watercolour, (no pen), to capture it.

Here is the result:

The Kowhai is a native of New Zealand. It attracts our native bird the Tui who feed on the nectar of the flowers. I thought I had one Tui in this tree, but once I sat sketching it I realised I had two. There was only one in the tree at a time as they are very territorial, but were constantly changing and arguing over which one it would be.

Here is a photo of a Tui in my Mum's Kowhai tree I took some time ago:

Tui (Prothemadera novaeseelandiae).

Family: meliphagidae

Fully Protected. Native to New Zealand. Slightly bigger than a blackbird. Found throughout New Zealand up to 3500 feet. Primarily in Native Forests, but also in gardens.