I’m growing calendula in my garden at the moment, it’s throwing out some beautiful flowers. The colour is just amazing, you can’t help but feel happy when you look at them. It’s exactly what you need to see in Winter.
My garden isn’t huge or fancy. In fact it looks like a mishmash of ideas, like a patchwork blanket garden. We’re slowly working out what needs to stay or go but I find it hard to get rid of anything if it’s alive!
Right now there’s big ripe lemons, nasturtiums popping up everywhere (one of my all time favourites), freesias (also a favourite) that seem to only want to pop up between loose bricks and now calendulas.
I’ve just finished a postcard size drawing for someone as a thankyou, I won a giveaway through instagram and I was blown away with all the gifts I was sent. I’m a huge fan of the creator and hope one day I can get to wherever he is to get a tattoo done. His work is like reading a story and feeling all the magic and mystery within an image. Exactly what I’d love from my next tattoo. So that’s one dream percolating away in my spirit.
This is the ‘thankyou for your generosity’ post card. I did get a scan of it incase the postal services lose it somewhere along the way!
I guess it’s slightly odd to draw monochrome a flower that really should be in colour, it’s an exceptionally beautiful shade of orange. I did try to capture it in another version but it just looked wrong. I think I’ll try again on the next batch of calendulas. For now I’ve kept the remainder of flowers as a hung bunch to dry out and use in future.
I’ve got a few photos of the calendula in a vase (well, it’s actually my water pot for when I’m painting 😂) so maybe there’ll be one more drawing, definitely with collage. The postcard didn’t have any collaging for fear of it coming off during transit. I’m not entirely sure which one I’ll be drawing but this is one of the shots.
Maybe I should wait for the next batch and try to arrange them a bit better!
Anna Campbell 