I have a fascination with hedgerows and roadside verges and have amassed a huge collection of photographs of hedges, walls, banks, field edges and general clumps of tangled greenery. They are miniature worlds of intertwined plants and scuttling bugs in various layers, mostly oblivious to the rest of the world. These photos have been a great reference source in many of my projects especially when the hedges are the subject themselves. Here are just a few.
Whether it is Spring or Autumn there is much to see just beside the roads and lanes of the countryside, as the year progresses the same spot can look completely different and sometimes it is enough just to paint a small metre square section. In the Spring there are the leaves unfurling and the wildflowers in bud, I love to see the first Celandine, in the Summer the banks are covered in flowers and insects with grasses rustling in the wind, in the Autumn all the fruits and berries and the leaves turning red and even in Winter there are the dried seed heads and the frosted edges, and that is just the plants. Usually there are insects and butterflies but if you are quiet and lucky there may be small mammals and birds. When I do paint places like this I think of them as the ‘unlooked for’ subjects, things that are around us everyday that we don’t notice and I love them.
This last photo is of a work in progress, so I can only show this stage, it is one that I am painting when I have time to fit it around other things. The subject is mainly Bindweed and Ivy but I think the some small creatures may be about to crawl in.
Worm Illustration 