July has arrived and woodlands are fully embracing the summer season with mosses, ferns and woodland wildflowers creating a feeling of wonderful abundance beneath leafy green canopies above.
This month’s Wild & Wonderful studio journal is a little bit different.
This time I’d love to introduce my brand-new summer original art collection and give you a little look behind the inspiration for these paintings.
Imagine a summer-time forest. Birdsong welcomes us wanderers beneath leafy green trees, which offer dappled shade to mosses, ferns and ivy below. Honeysuckle, bramble and wild rose tangle and clamber along the edges of a woodland path, inviting moths, bees and beautiful butterflies to dance in the hazy air around us...
It's been a busy time in the studio.
Over the last few weeks, sketches, drawings and colour palette plans have been slowly transformed into fully fledged artwork.
Each artwork is painted using traditional gouache paint on fine art paper and explores the hidden wonders of native British woodlands in summertime.
Between drawing out new designs and painting in the studio, I was out in the woods collecting forest finds, making sketches and taking note of the wild things nestled on the forest floor and flittering among tree branches.
I’ve found inspiration between the trees.
There’s a feeling of richness and wild abundance in a summer forest that I wanted to bring into each painting. From strawberries, bramble and forest ferns to tangles of flowering ivy and honeysuckle, with moths, birds and butterflies painted within.
The Wild Strawberry artwork was one of the first to emerge, painted against a summery chequerboard background of pale green and white with two common blue butterflies.
I also worked on a series of smaller artwork perfect for gallery walls and hidden nooks featuring wonderful woodland birds surrounded by summer forest botanicals, such as Wren & Bramble, Blue Tit & Wood Sorrel and Goldcrest & Ivy.
And something new has emerged.
I’m excited to share that the collection also includes the beginning of a brand-new series of paintings, my own woodland inspired interpretations of traditional still life floral art.
Each is a celebration of a summer forest, featuring bountiful summertime vases overflowing with all sorts of forest finds, birds, moths and beautiful blooms...
You can view the three paintings here:
I absolutely loved working on this new collection. Finding inspiration deep in our summertime woodlands has been a complete joy. I’m so pleased with the finished paintings and I hope they will bring a little summertime enchantment to their new homes.
If you’d like to explore the paintings which are still available, you can take a look at the collection here.
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