Peas and Quiet

I eat my peas with honey,

I’ve done it all my life.

It makes the peas taste funny,

But it keeps them on the knife.

Anon

The peas are ready in the garden, a treat we look forward to every year. We don’t eat them with honey though. The pods are a lush green, with the shiny little peas inside, and the vine tendrils curling. I had an hour or so to spare uninterrupted, so I metaphorically grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and decided to sketch a pod in watercolours.

I outlined the shapes in pencil first, then started in with the paint, putting a yellow base into the pod and peas, then adding greens and blues. I made the mistake of colouring the vine tendrils before I did the saucer background, which gave me a tricky shading problem. Not only this, but I used too thick a line for the tendrils, too much paint on too large a brush. I must try to remember to swap brushes for the very fine stuff. Getting the saucer to look round was not a simple matter; putting the paint on the detail exaggerated the inaccuracies. I also noticed rather too late that there was a yellow/orange shadow on the saucer, which I added after the blue. In an ideal world I’d have put this in earlier.

Never mind. I am pleased that this picture definitely has the handmade, slightly wobbly feeling of a painting, not a photo.