The Hellebores

The Hellebores are really coming into their own in the garden now. I’ve been watching them push up through the earth and begin to bloom through March. 

Naturally, I wanted to draw them. Like the snowdrops this ins’t the first time I’ve drawn them but I learn more about them each time I do.

These ones I painted on lovely, thick watercolour paper.

After drawing these, I cut them out by hand.

I did three studies, three separate stems, and cut each of these out. Here they are in the garden - it was useful to look at them in pure natural light against other ones, to check my colours and scale. 

As you may know, I’ve been working on the idea of cut flowers for almost a year, and one area that I have been trying to resolve is how to present them. 

For these I experimented with origami vases. I wanted to be able to put them into a vase as you would have with real flowers, so there is a 3D element to it.

These work really nicely in a box frame - which allows the cut flowers to be protected but not squashed!