STORY BEHIND THE ART OF DEBORAH B. SHAW
22nd Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists at Marin Art & Garden Center
Eucalyptus lehmannii, fruit
Eucalyptus lehmannii
This painting serendipitously began with Carol Woodin coming for a visit. She had been told of a wholesale grower of exotic flowers in Fallbrook, California: Resendiz Brothers. We decided it would be a fun adventure and were able to arrange a tour.
The farm is located in a steep, rural area in Fallbrook. It took several trips back and forth along the narrow, twisting road to find the entrance. The steep hills, climate and soil provide the perfect growing conditions for more than 100 acres of exotic flowers, focused on Australian and South African species and cultivars. The farm, greenhouses, cooling and packing areas are a riot of color and form, depending on the season—Proteas, Pincushions, Banksias, Grevilleas, Leucospermums, Leucadendrons, and other rare and specialty breeds competing for attention. Many of the varieties are hybrids, created and grown only by Resendiz Brothers. The brothers work hard to actively manage their environmental footprint in their farming practices, conserving water and energy.
Each area of our tour was a new, visual delight. Much to the amusement of our tour guide, our mouths fell open when passing the “trash” area, with all the bits and pieces designated for the compost heap. Our guide generously shared samples with us. The branch of seed pods that became the subject for this painting—wonderfully bizarre and unknown to me at the time—was stacked with others under a table from a recent pruning.
We left with armloads of treasures. Poor Carol had to get on a plane shortly thereafter and leave most of them behind.
Eucalyptus lehmannii is a eucalypt endemic to Southwestern Australia. It is a short, bushy tree, frequently grown as a screen tree against the wind, since the foliage grows down to the ground.
It is widespread in the coastal and subcostal areas, tolerating low water and salt. It has been planted extensively in areas in California and South Africa as a wind screen and to combat erosion, and consequently has been described as invasive in southern Africa.
Eucalyptus lehmannii is named after Johan Georg Christian Lehmann (1792–1860), a Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Gardens in Hamburg, Germany. He authored many botanical books and was editor of Plantae Preissianae.
The branch is heavy for its size, with a thick, flattened stalk leading to the knobbly fruit. The pods offer delightful composition, perspective, dense color and imaginative comparisons. The branch still sits in a large vase next to my table, and everyone who sees it comments on the “owl faces” or other animals they see in the pods. Plus, who can resist a common name like “Bushy Yates”!
Extensive internet research also turned up lots of complaints about the fruit. Apparently, the pods litter the ground, and are extremely unfriendly to lawn mowers and their operators, becoming projectiles during routine lawn care. In their native environment, the fruit is attractive to Cockatoos, who can make short work of the hard, tough pods.
While on a walk, fellow ASBA/BAGSC member Olga Ryabtsova discovered a group of these trees, still fairly young, planted along a street in Irvine, California. She drew a map for me, and now I have a more local source for the flowers and leaves throughout the growing season. The flowers are as astonishing as the fruit, and I’m currently debating whether to paint them entirely in watercolor, or portray them in mixed media, like the fruit in this painting.
I have been experimenting with using watercolor under graphite on vellum for more than a decade, with an ongoing series of dry fruit and seed pods. I have always admired grisaille paintings but have found that applying color over grisaille tones tends to negate the luminosity of vellum, making the colors look muted and muddy. Separating watercolor areas from grisaille on vellum frequently results in a bizarre optical illusion—the watercolor areas seemed to float disconcertingly above the grisaille, as though they were on an entirely different layer, hovering above the painting.
The solution has been to put layers of watercolor underneath the graphite. By varying the amount of water and which pigments I use, subsequent layers of graphite automatically create planned textures of fruit, bark, and seeds. It takes quite a bit of experimentation to get the right combination, but it is a great exercise in observation, play, and “loosening up” before painting.
Early on in my experiments, I found that regular, everyday graphite could easily be moved on vellum with a damp brush. This allowed me to lift fine lines out of graphite areas and tighten up edges. When water soluble graphite came on the market, it was a perfect fit. It’s much easier for me to achieve fine hairlines with a brush instead of a graphite lead of any type, and the ability to combine brushed graphite with “pencil” graphite opened a world of more texture possibilities.
The colors in the Eucalyptus lehmannii branch and fruit lent themselves to warm watercolor undercolors of quinacridones—reds, oranges and golds—followed by layers of graphite and water-soluble graphite. This piece of vellum has flecks of similar colors running through it here and there, reinforcing the colors in the branch. The motion of the textures in the vellum and the flecks of color fit the composition and the energy of the subject.
One of my favorite things about fellow ASBA/BAGSC members are the resources and unexpected adventures that lead to fantastic subjects. Thank you!
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Read more about this artist’s work: America's Flora