Spring Inspiration

​Throughout the winter I've been focusing mostly on my bookmaking and creating painted books.  Such a beautiful, mild spring here in Maryland and the suggestion of a friend, inspired me to get outside and get back to some good old-fashioned field sketching.  I also was super excited to try out my new field sketching backpack the has a folding camp stool. 
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My friend mentioned to me that she had seen wild orchids on a local trail.  I had heard rumor of these orchids for years, but never had any luck in finding them on my own. If you have been following my blog you know I'm an incorrigible bibliophile. So I ordered a field guide focused solely on orchids in the region I live in order to read up on the subject and train my eye better.

If you have ever gone "hunting" for something that you have only seen in photographs then you know the difficulty of locating your quarry.  Nature has so many subtleties and quietly consistent habits that looking for something, like a rare wild orchid, is a bit like feeling your way through a dark room that you've only seen in the light once. So we met up and she showed me where they were. 
The conditions seemed auspicious: it had rain heavily a few days before so the forest was lush, but the trail dry.  It was a cool, cloudy afternoon, perfect for sketching and taking pictures. 
We were rewarded quickly with the side of the heavily wooded path early on our walk being dotted here and there with Showy Orchis in various stages of development and bloom.  These shy little flowers are fond of hiding under the undergrowth.  However, once my eye was train to look for the tiny flash of soft violet with bright white amid smooth fresh green broad leaves, they were fairly easy to spot. 

The lady slipper was another matter.  It turned out this little treasure enjoys a different environment, drier and higher in elevation than the Showy Orchis and among pine tree clearings and poking up from the pine needle bed.  You would think that a lavender slipper shaped flower in a clearing would be easy to spot.  But, these flowers on this trail are loners for the most part.  We found two but they were about ten feet apart.

These little beauties are only about 8" tall so my camp stool was of little use and I found myself lying on my stomach (something I hadn't done since I was a child!) and drawing them.  In order to get the desired detail I started with 90 lbs. hot press Arches paper.  My new love is water soluble graphite so I did an underdrawing with a standard 2H pencil and then added the values with the water soluble graphite pencils (I had good luck with Faber-Castell and Derwent brands).  I also added additional values and deeper values using the graphite that comes as a "cake" (similar to pan watercolors-ArtGraf brand).  A few days later I decided to touch the sketches with watercolor.  The resulting sketches are shown here. 

​If you have been following my blog and works in progress, then you know I am find of working in series. So despite that fact that I currently have three other series in the works, I'm hoping to start a local orchid or at least wildflower series as well.  Too many things to draw and paint and too little time!