Welcome to Nature Uncovered

This is the cover for An Illustrated Country Year

To see books and art by Celia Lewis, click here for the official website.

Coloured pencil Ming vase

I thought I would enter for the Derwent Pencil Competition which is held at the Mall Galleries in London in September.  Here is one of my entries completed using Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils.

I love this Ming dynasty vase which is in the British Museum and thought gold leaf would enhance the painting, so I put that on first.  The background was very hard work and took me several hours to cover such a large area but I think it brings out the colours of the vase.  Here is how it progressed:

Indian colour

I’ve just completed a series of Indian linocuts to complement my daughter’s (http://mollymahon.com) block printing.  She uses joyful colours so these are framed in similar tones.

 

They are in frames that can stand alone or be hung on a wall and measure  40cmx34cm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butterflies on vellum

A few butterflies around at last, here are four of the commonest: Peacock, Tortoishell, Painted Lady and Red Admiral.  The caterpillars of these four all feed on nettles so leave a little patch for them in your garden.  I’ve painted them in watercolour on vellum and they are life size.  Available framed from my website www.celialewis.co.uk

Little birds on vellum

I’ve been working hard at a collection of small English birds on calfskin vellum – here are a few for your delectation.  A Coletit, a Robin and a Wren

Painting on vellum

My final week of my botanical art course and we attempted painting on vellum.

 

Vellum is derived from the Latin word ‘vitulinum’ meaning ‘made from calf’ and is in fact cleaned, bleached, stretched and scraped calf or goat skin. Preparing the vellum is a lengthy and skillful process but once achieved it is smooth and durable. The two sides of the skin are distinct: the inside and the outside or hair side. Look carefully and you can still see the hair follicles.

 

Painting on vellum is a different technique – when using watercolour, instead of using water you make your paint as dry as possible and use a tiny brush – paintstaking is the word. As you can imagine, vellum is very expensive so below are three paintings on bits of vellum 4” x 4”.

Pressing flowers

 

Its fun to see how many wild flowers you can find in your locality – I have reached 150 over the summer with one visit to the Suffolk coast and one to Wiltshire.  A good way of learning wild flower names and what family they are is to press them.  You can do this by simply putting them between sheets of blotting paper or newspaper and weighting them down for a couple of weeks.  I am impatient and I use a wonderful little gadget called a Microfleur into which you place your flowers and then pop it in the microwave for 1 minute – hey presto, the flowers are pressed and ready to stick in your book.  Here are a few pages from my pressed flower album:

Animals on block print – Giraffe

I’ve been enjoying a break from Botanical Art and instead painting animals in acrylic on paper that I have block printed  or printed with linocuts.  Here is a giraffe – this painting is currently at the lovely Wey Gallery in Godalming, Surrey.  www.theweygallery.com 

 

 

I have two more bits of paper ready to go – possibly a cow on the blue one and a pig on the grey – we’ll see what evolves:

A day at a Letterpress workshop

I recently spent a day learning all about relief printing using a press – known as Letterpress.  This was the original and oldest form of printing and involves setting out your text letter by letter.  This you do upside down and back to front – confusing at first.  The type comes in all sorts of styles and sizes, the largest letters made of wood and smaller ones of metal.  There is something infinitely satisfying getting everything to fit together and then actually printing it – here is what I did (the flowers I painted on later)

 

The workshop was held at Mr Smith’s Letterpress in Kennington (www.smithsrules.com) and here is  Mr Smith at work:

 

 

Some of the typeface and spacers to choose from:

A selection of tulips

A visit to Dunsborough Park in Ripley, which has the most amazing collection of tulips inspired this painting, which was completed using a restricted palette of Schmincke watercolours as an exercise for my botanical art course.  Tulips are just the most lovely things to paint – I particularly enjoy trying to capture the shiny petals.

Bracken and a dead bumblebee

I’m enjoying doing these vignettes but for a change this week I couldn’t resist adding a few insects.  My husband breeds the Emperor moths and last years chrysalises have just hatched and I found the dead bumblebee  lying in the garden.  The bracken is already rearing its ugly head.