Northern Wild Flowers

This is a small study of northern wild flowers in pen & ink and watercolour. Of course there is still about 4 feet of snow here.  It usually starts to melt in April.  So it will be a while until I can go out gathering flowers to bring home to paint.  I used some photographs to paint this little group, even though I was not able  to go into nature to gather these ones I still like to paint a group of flowers that are from a similar habitat.  Starting on the left the yellow flower is Arnica, which is a very widely used medicinal plant.  In the middle is Pink Wintergreen, called "winter-green" because it is one of the only brave little souls that keeps it's green leaves all year round even when it is buried deep beneath the snow. And the flower on the right is a purple Marsh Violet.  I always get so excited when the violets come out in May here.  They are one of the first wild flowers to bloom.  Other common violets around here are the yellow Stream Violet and the Early Northern Violet.

What are the first types of wild flowers to bloom in your area?


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Spring Flowers for my Sketching in Nature Journal

Spring is tumbling along with new flowers blooming every few days, and, like last year, I'm having trouble keeping up! The flowers on these two journal pages were all done with a combination of Derwent and Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, pen and ink and white gouache. The pieces of the little skeleton drifted down out of the trees with a clump of leaves and it seemed fitting that I added a little "old" along with the "new."