quietly creating

Barbara Wanhill

recent posts

  • Travelling light

    The last few weeks I have practiced recording the way the light hits various parts of the garden. It has been a visually exciting exercise and a great way for me to reacquaint myself with my DSLR. I don’t use a tripod and use the stock lens. I like to keep things simple.

    Lately, the bees and other pollinators have been especially active on the Veronicastrum, Agastache and Echinacea. I have all of these plants very close to each other and the bees fly back and forth doing what they do. It’s mesmerizing to watch.

    This afternoon I was quite pleased with the resulting photos. Three of them were touched up in Photoshop, the rest are untouched.

    It has been a summer of sporadic creative activity for me with a good stretch of daily morning garden work. It was just what I needed to feel like I’m recovering myself again.

    All photographs, B. Wanhill. August 2022. Canon T3i.

  • Reasons for a system of practice

    Last night I was looking for something and came across one of the sketchbooks I promised myself I would get back to this summer. It was 9:30pm but I proceeded: 15-20 minutes of drawing. By the end, I was half-asleep. Again, not my best effort… not particularly excited about it either. This morning, I defiantly added some Micron and felt better about it.

    There would have been a time for me that this was not good enough to share. Some say: why keep doing something if you don’t like to do it? (I have asked myself this!) But I think it is important to follow through. The process of making art takes work and practice – even if one is not up to it and even when it doesn’t look the best.

    I think I have outgrown this sketchbook to be honest, but I’ll continue to chip away at it as a convenient way to document the botanicals in my life. I notice my interests in mark making have changed. It also holds a record of the last four years and is a good way to see where I’ve been keen to draw and when life/distractions/duties have intervened.

    Included, a few pages illustrating drawings I’ve done over the years. This idea for a perpetual journal came from the phenomenal botanical artist, Lara Gastinger. I am grateful for her sharing and have made peace with the fact I will never have the patience (or eye sight!) to draw the way she does.

    All drawings, B. Wanhill. 2018-2022.

  • Astrantia, digital play

    In the mid ’90s I temporarily lost a contact lens while trying to focus my unblinking eye on a now forgotten object in a back alley in Kelowna. No tripod, a basic SLR Ricoh and determination to get as crisp a shot as possible. Another image for a class assignment… I did enjoy taking photos, not so much the darkroom.

    Today: smudges on my glasses, one lens of my progressives better for seeing close-up than the other and an “old” Canon EOS Rebel T3i. No class assignment, a Saturday morning in the back garden, 30ºC and the elegant Astrantia. Thanks to the immediacy of digital, I’m practicing seeing through photography again. Light and shadow are marvellous aren’t they?

    Astrantia major. All photos, B. Wanhill July 2022. Canon T3i