Artwork & Sanity update.

Happy friday! And it is a happy friday because I feel amazing this week. A large part of this is due to blogger friends so I want to give you all a hug 🙂

4 sessions at the gym so far this week and back again tonight. So much energy!

BUT this has a small downside in that I am struggling to settle to anything, be it work, drawing or anything else. My poor mind is constantly distracted and I want to do everything at once!

So  – I did eventually manage to get some more done on the Geissorhiza drawing on Sunday. I’ve added a second yellow species and started to form the middle ground of the composition. Now it needs something else centre-left. Whilst I think about this I have started to add the corkscrew shaped leaves of G. corrugata at the bottom. I didn’t have a good reference photograph with the light from the correct direction so I simply took a piece of wire and coiled it around a pencil to make a simulated leaf to help me get the shadows right.

I thought I’d add some info on the plants in this composition as I do updates from now on, note that the blue-purple in the flower photographs is too pink and the blue version in my composition is nearer to the right colour:

Geissorhiza means ’tile-root’ and refers to the overlapping shingle-like tunics on the corm.

The species centre-left in my composition is Geissorhiza radians. The very similar G. mathewsii at bottom right differs in that it has smaller flowers, wider leaves and lacks the black lines and nectaries of G. radians. Here is a photograph of the two together and one of G. mathewsii with my thumb for scale.

These species form part of a group of flowers in the Iris family with similar colouring called the ‘wine-cups’. There are also species in other Irid genera with the same colouring (e.g. Babiana rubrocyanea). All grow in South Africa, in the Cape floristic region and have evolved similar colouring to attract the same pollinators.

Here is Babiana rubrocyanea in habitat (picture taken by me at Darling, RSA in August 1999).