The Hempel Collection

Inky Leaves has been featured on Egnelnick and Webb's blog. If you ever wondered what happened to Caroline the Coffee plant, she's currently in London...

 

The Green Giant has been scanned

'The Green Giant', 2013, J R Shepherd © (Coffea arabica - The Coffee Plant)

Plus, if you were intersted in the coffee thing, there is a delightful little blog post about a book called 'The Berry That Changed World', which was published in 1898 and is all about the history of Coffee. You can read the book online too which is pretty cool. It has loads of illustrations in it, which I actually find rather interesting to look at from a sociological point of view.

Title page of 'The Berry That Changed the World' - A book on coffee

A bit of scale

Today I am posting these photographs to give you all an idea of the scale of Green Giant. You might be able to notice from the pictures (cue squinting at your respective computer screens) that I made a start on four leaves yesterday, including two of the top ones. I can see the finishing line...! Which means I intend to make my next post on this painting the very last one showing you the finished piece, thus making this the penultimate post. I am aware that it gets boring after a while. 'Yes, yes Jess - you did another leaf. Anything new Jess? No? Ok, so I guess we have to make do with leaves AGAIN...' I suppose the clue about the content of this online spiel is in the title of this blog, but even I'm finding myself getting bored. Gagging to start something new.

So yes - this is the penultimate post illustrating me tackling the worse bit of all - the last bit. And for some reason (I do this every time) I have left the hardest bits last. I hate painting the undersides of leaves at the best of times, but these ones are back lit. Oh joy of flippin' joys. Still... I am pleased with the process thus far. For these geezers at the top I am using dry brush because I need to feel like I have a bit of control, even if I don't.

Playing around...

Oh the joys of playing around with an idea - it's such fun! I am currently busy exploring with the 'holy-leaf' on my coffee plant painting... Keeping the thread going with all of the work I have done previous to this (whilst satisfying my interest in ethnobotanical plants, the environment, plant conservation and the desire to produce educational paintings for the 21st century) I am currently hijacking brands. The idea of incorporating packaging into my work started last year when I began collecting data for the Bare Necessities Project and now, at long last, I am putting it into practice and seeing how it looks...

I am not sure on the size of the logo, but I like the watermarking effect on them so that they blend in more with the rest of the leaves. The picture below shows what it looked like before I used the eraser tool and as we can see it's completely ruining the composition. In my view, it is staring me in the face too much and looks about as wrong as 'the hole', but not for the right reasons. With the hole I like the tension and the questioning, in the picture below it just looks strange and like I couldn't be bothered to finish it.