The other day I ate fresh beetroot for the first time in years and while preparing them I thought what fun they would be to draw. I did a little reading up on this veg and it is a very versatile source of food and will be making a much bigger appearance in my kitchen…
Author: artbyeileen
I am a South African born artist, who has lived in 5 different countries in the last 20 years. I returned to South Africa in 2016 and I am now living in St Lucia, a small tropical village on the shores of the Indian Ocean. My rather unusual life experiences and travels have influenced my style and choice of subject matter. The rich desert colours, the vibrancy of the tropical flowers, all my paintings communicate my connection to the land and nature. Flowers are my main subject and I am inspired by layerings of colour, be it bright and ebullient, or understated and muted. Colour can evoke so many different responses in someone and my paintings speak to their viewer through their movement, colour and texture. Painting is my way of sharing the pleasure I derive from the beauty that surrounds me in nature and especially the flowers I so loves to paint. An ability to communicate all of this through granular sculptural textures, three dimensional application of paint and striking use of colour makes my art work bold and engaging.
Senor Onion
After a sketching roots of irises and orchids I found I rather enjoyed drawing the higgeldy piggledy tangle the roots seem to get themselves into. Rather than concentrating on colour I wanted to focus on a more monochromatic drawing and make the roots the central part of the sketch. I decided an onion was good…
Iris foetidissima
Iris foetidissima or otherwise known as Stinking gladwyn is so called because of its foul smelling leaves. This species of Iris is usually found in open woodland, hedgebanks and sea-cliffs. Its natural range is Western Europe, including England south of Durham and also Ireland, and from France south and east to N. Africa, Italy and…
Mallee Eucalyptus
This Eucalyptus is native to the south west of Western Australia. It grows to between 0.8 and 5 metres in height. It has silver grey leaves and the red, pink or cream flowers are up to 100 mm in diameter. This Eucalyptus flowers in early spring to summer and from late autumn to early winter….
Toadstools
Amanita Muscaria with Betula leaves….. Sounds very fancy, but all it is is Latin for toadstools with birch leaves. My 4th attempt at Botanical illustrations. Also done on artists sketch paper with a combination of pencil and pencil crayon. The two mushrooms look like they have been drawn in pencil, but in reality they are…
An attempt at botanical illustrations
I have always been interested in trying my hand at botanical illustrations. My father was a forester and a horticulturist, my mother a florist and I come from a long line of fanatical gardeners so I guess it makes sense that this line of illustration would interest me. Initially I wanted to do the botanical…
Fluorescent Dahlia
In my artists philosophy I write of one of my earliest childhood memories of escaping the watchful eye of my mother to pluck one of her precious dahlias from her garden. It was the garden equivalent of an orchestra and I had fallen in love with the most beautifully lush dahlia. It was a magnificent…
An artists process…….
I watched this short video clip this morning and it left me rethinking what I suspect I always knew on a subconscious level…… Phil Hansen – The art of the imperfect The idea that limitations and constraints increase creativity…… Imposing constraints, or in some cases dealing with unavoidable limitations, rather than REMOVING them, allows us…
Resin Disaster…..
Many years ago when my kids were still toddlers decoupage was very fashionable and I used to play around with endless decoupage projects which involved wrapping paper, stenciling things and hand painting trays and it was here I learned of an epoxy resin that dried like clear glass over the base of a serving tray….
A caravan of camels……
Creating an organic landscape is always a labour intensive and time consuming process. It starts with preparing the composition and sketching it onto the canvas just so I have a general idea of where to lay my various texture and gel mediums. Once this is completed the layering and drying process starts and only when…
Cattleya Orchid
This orchid is the final of the set I needed to complete. It is the same Cattleya family to the previous orchid, but just with a wonderful brilliant magenta center. The client wanted me to keep them all similar so I stayed with varieties of white orchids. The background is the same throughout the set…
Another Orchid
This is part two of what will eventually be a set of three. She wants them similar in colour and the background needs to “match”. The first one I completed a while ago as a Christmas gift for a friend. They now want two more (with the same dimensions) to make a grouping of three…
