Sunday Sketches

Tulips make spring magical. They just show up and splash color on the winter barren landscape. Tulips make me smile.

Not only do they provide a gorgeous showing, but also when they begin to die their shapes and contours are wonderful. I am more prone to drawing or painting them at their senior stages.

Senior Tulips
Joanne Osband
watercolors
8" X 11"

Color Combinations

Last fall I got obsessed with planting tulips and daffodils. Knowing I would love the spring flowers unfolding, I lost track after 300 bulbs. In fact, I forgot which ones I planted and where!

The tulips and daffodils have been a pleasant color sensation amidst our dreary, rainy spring.

I must share with you the color combination that is unfolding before my eyes. Dark, dark purple, almost black tulips and apricot pink tulips with a backdrop of yellow daffodils and green foliage. Absolutely STUNNING!


Closer view....





The fabulous bird bath is a Fae Marie Beck creation. Her studio is in Toledo, Washington and she participates in ArtTrails of Southwest Washington which occurs the last two weekends of September.

Daffodils Out, Tulips In

Changing of the guards at my house; daffodils are slowing dying and the tulips are starting to emerge.

I love the love the colors!

Here is my first patch of tulips:




They are just asking to be subject matter for tomorrow's
Sunday Sketch.

Exquisite Color

I could not pass by this exquisite display of color without stopping to capture it on my camera phone.

These two patches of tulips flanked the entrance of the driveway. Someone had excellent color awareness when he/she planted this spectacular tulip garden.

Wouldn't you agree?

Tulips

Today a friend and I took a walk around the Olympia Capitol and its historic district to see the array of flowers in bloom.

I found these tall, stately (pun!), colorful tulips near the Capitol absolutely stunning.


I like the blend of colors and those tulips that appear marbled.

I learned that what is considered a variegated color pattern was caused from an infection called the Tulip Breaking Virus or the Mosaic Virus that was carried by the green peach aphids. While the virus produces fantastically colourful flowers, it also caused weakened plants that died slowly. Today the virus is almost eradicated from tulip growers' fields. Those Tulips affected by mosaic virus are called "Broken tulips"; they will occasionally revert to a plain or solid colouring, but still remain infected with the virus.

Origin of the name?

Although tulips are associated with Holland, commercial cultivation of the flower began in the Ottoman Empire. The tulip is a flower indigenous to a vast area encompassing parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The word tulip, which earlier appeared in English in forms such as tulipa or tulipant, entered the language by way of French tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulīpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend ("muslin" or "gauze"), and is ultimately derived from the Persian language dulband ("turban"). (The English word turban, first recorded in English in the 16th century, is a cognate.)

We have several Tulip Festivals in the state of Washington.
Here is one of my paintings after a visit to the fields.

Tulip Fields

In Washington we have several places to get up close and personal to fields of tulips. What an amazing array of colors!

I have always been intrigued by the bands of colors and have wondered if I could capture the feeling in a watercolor painting. Here is my first watercolor painting of the tulip fields in Woodland, Washington.

How did I do?

Lilacs and Tulips in One Day

It was a glorious Washington spring day (sunshine & warm), and my good friend and I went for a road trip in Lily to Woodland, Washington to see the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens.

To our surprise there was a tulip festival, too.
What a day to feast in lilacs and tulips!

A picture is worth one thousand words.







Can you smell them?









Maybe three thousand words?!?!