Black hellebore flowers make a lovely green dye and ink

Planning out an embroidery based on a collage of natural ink splodges

My World Book Night 2021 entry to the Herbarium

The Herbarium on display in Bower Ashton library (photo ©Linda Parr)

Working with grids (again!) this week. I took some photos of different shapes in the garden – mostly steps and decking – and traced these off to make a masked drawing with natural ink. The ink used was rhubarb root, bramble and acorn gall (with and without iron). This feels like a starting point rather than a finished piece, so I’m looking forward to developing this further.

I dyed with black hellebore flowers… only a small batch but enough to see that it gave the best green I’ve managed to achieve yet. It also boils down to a good ink.

I re-visited a collage made a couple of weeks back from my ink sample sheets – I isolated a section of this and have traced it off to make a small embroidery. Quite pleasing to see that a similar palette could be chosen with the naturally dyed threads. I think this will work well on linen.

In between tending to my seedlings (currently taking over the spare room, cold frame and greenhouse) I’m enjoying drawing them in a tiny coptic-bound sketchbook given to me by Eva Hejdström.

Finally, Friday was World Book Night and it was a pleasure to take part again in the annual call for entries to mark the occasion. This year a Herbarium has been created – an exhibition of literary-inspired flower illustrations in Bower Ashton library. My illustration of periwinkles was inspired by a poem called ‘A Tale’ by Edward Thomas. These flowers are my nemesis in my garden… it’s an ongoing battle to stop them swamping everything, so it was good to pause and appreciate the beautiful flowers before I start yanking them up all over again! A pdf catalogue of the Herbarium can be downloaded here. Many thanks to Sarah Bodman and Linda Parr for organising this wonderful collaboration.