Painting a Seed Pod

On the first day of class, Kerri Weller, our botanical art instructor informed us that she wanted us to have three completed, framed illustrations by the end of the session! That seemed rather ambitious to me - but we have begun working on these three final "projects"! They were to be samples of: bark, seed pods and "ribbon" art (naturally twisting leaves or grasses that turn to show both sides). I haven't found a sample of ribbon art outdoors yet, but I did pick up a few branches that may work for the bark drawing.

Some of the students have interesting pieces of bark that fell off of trees.













My neighbor Mary has some tall ornamental grasses in her front yard - and from time to time their seed pods emerge from the snow. So she brought me one.











I was working on it during my last art class. After painting it, our instructor, Kerri, showed me how to remove some of the color with an angled brush, to create the tiny white spaces that can be seen between the fronds.

I woke up this morning with the idea of adding a few floating seeds to show that this is a seed pod. The seeds do tend to fall off as I work on them.




Maybe I'll plant these seeds indoors and see if they grow. I'm not sure if these grasses are annuals that re-seed naturally or if their roots are perennial. It's been a long time since I started seedlings indoors!