Saturday 27 June 2015

Quick Vegetable Sketches

Just a note to say that today I started a vegetable-drawing project.  There will be a few more pages like this before long - the purple, orange and yellow produce has yet to be represented.

Fun with acrylic inks.

These are not my vegetables, although my first potatoes have been harvested, the raspberries are fruiting happily and courgette flowers are turning into courgette courgettes.

Elsewhere in Southampton, the rose garden in Andrews Park is at its best and the Common has impressive pockets of elderflower.

Here is the ebullient introduction to the June chapter of Ambrose Heath's "Good Food" (of 1932 and recently reprinted in all its Edward Bawden illustrated glory):

June for jubilation!  For now Mother Earth almost embarrasses us with her riches, and the gastronomic year enters upon its most glorious stage.  With what profusion she flings out the plenitude of garden and field, and with what cunning she sets her offerings before us, so that every mood is suited:- and most of all her triumphs, tender peas and new potatoes, luscious lettuces, rosy cherries nodding on the bough, strawberries blushing on their fresh-strown bed, red and ivory spilth of raspberries sheltering under the dewy leaves.  It is easy to be lyrical about June. Let us emulate our greedy childhood days, and rob her orchards and kitchen-gardens for all we are worth.

UPDATE:  Here are some of the later, more developed drawings!