Pansies and Violas: Favourite Flowers

Anyone who has followed me for a long time here or elsewhere on social media knows how much I love pansies and violas. They have strong childhood associations for me and remind me particularly of my mom's mother who was named Viola. They are also favourite garden flowers with delicate looks yet a hardy character, perfect for a northern garden. And they are a joy to paint.

This spring I did a painting of some little yellow and white violas that I bought in a little pot to cheer up our kitchen windowsill. I've made my watercolour into prints and cards. You can see the note card in the photo at the top.

Cheering up is the key role I think of these flowers. Whether in the garden, a pot or a vase, their little faces have the ability to lift our spirits. Who doesn't need that, especially right now?

The very first print I created in my studio in 2011, when I launched my online art business, was of a watercolour painting I did of a pot of pansies in my backyard. That happy group of blue pansies was punctuated by pink nemesia, coral diascia and white euphorbia. It's still available in my shop as a print (shown below) and note cards.

This past week, I added an assortment of pansy and viola note cards to my shop. I chose five of my favourite watercolour paintings: Pansy Quartet, Pansies in a Pot, Posy of Pansies and Violas, Violas and Verbena, and Yellow and White Violas. This notecard collection is for all of the pansy and viola lovers out there like me.

When I was a little girl, I would follow my grandmother around as she fed the birds and squirrels in her backyard and tended to the annuals. One of my favourite memories is of her letting me pick pansies from the garden to put in the beautiful silver and glass posy vase she owned. The memory of gathering pansies with her was so special to me that I tracked down an almost identical vase for myself years later from an antique dealer.

If you'd like to see all of my pansy and viola art currently available, click here. There are prints, print sets, note cards, my new note card assortment, and a bookmark. I hope that they give you the same pleasure that they give me.

🌼  🌼  🌼  🌼  🌼

A Soft Spot for Pansies

One of the things I have been trying to do as often as possible the past couple of years is to create sets of images when I paint. It's not something that I necessarily find to be intuitive. Often I want to paint one thing and then for the next painting, do something quite different! But by trying to offer more sets of images which I think is helpful to customers, I am finding that I do enjoy painting series. This is one of my favourite sets of prints that I currently offer in my shop: my set of four pansy prints. I introduced this set a few months ago but I have pansies on my mind these days because of all of the planting I am doing in my garden!

Anyone who has known me for a while is aware of what a soft spot I have for pansies. One of my grandmothers was named Viola. Here's a photo of my recently planted herb pots on our back porch taken in the late afternoon light. Of course, I had to add a pot of sweet little violas!

You can view all of my print sets here. I hope to introduce more sets this year. I have several paintings in my studio just waiting to be converted into prints. As with all of my sets, you can also opt to buy the prints individually or to make your own grouping.

And now back to planting!

🌿  🌿  🌿  🌿  🌿

November Musings

I've introduced a lot of new work to my shop recently. During the past week, I introduced a new collection of pansy prints. They are available individually and as a set. I have a real soft spot for pansies. Aside from being beautiful flowers, they are associated with many childhood memories. I used to pick pansies in my grandparents' garden. An extra layer to those memories and associations is the fact that my grandmother's name was Viola.

This past week, I also had something to celebrate. I passed 2,000 followers on Instagram! I appreciate the people who follow me there so much. Instagram is definitely one of my 'happy places'. It's a great place to feel encouragement and inspiration. A real hub of creativity.

Because I have been working on the computer so much the past couple of weeks to convert paintings into new prints, I find my afternoon walks with Meeko extra restorative. On Friday afternoon, I decided to walk a little farther than usual on a road we don't usually take. The road is bordered by corn fields. It was so beautiful.

That was the day that I learned that Meeko is the colour of a corn field in autumn. Now you know too.

While I do love autumn, November is not my favourite month. I miss the flowers in my garden. I find the lack of daylight hard. It makes taking product photos more complicated. I don't like that it's already dark when Chloé gets home from school. I start to feel the pressure of the impending holidays. I have lots of things to keep me busy in the weeks ahead which is good. Colder days will mean that I can start to walk regularly in the little forest with Meeko again. We've already been a couple of times.

With plentiful studio time and Meeko time, I'll get through November just fine.

Nature's Paintbox

I am constantly amazed by the beauty in nature. I love looking closely at flowers and admiring the lines, colours and textures of each bloom. Of all of the flowers I know, I think pansies remind me the most of watercolours. Don't you think Mother Nature must have her own extra special paintbox?

I have painted a lot of violas and pansies over the years. They are such happy flowers. You can click here to see a few of my prints featuring them.  If you are relatively new to my blog you won't know this special connection. One of my grandmothers was named Viola.

I planted the little beauties in these photos in my front garden this week. The traditional planting date for annuals in our region has been May 24th for many years. I tend to try to plant much earlier if overnight temperatures are forecast above frost. Pansies, however, can handle frost so they can be planted before most any other annual. One neighbour a few houses down never plants anything before May 24th. Often when I'm out planting my first annuals, he will pass by and say "Isn't it a little early to be planting those, Kathleen?" I always assure him that they will be fine. It's like an annual tradition! I was a little disappointed that he didn't walk by this year. ;)

I have been so busy this past week with the spring cleanup in my garden that I haven't had a paintbrush in my hand once! I have so many flower beds that it takes at least five full days to clean everything up. I filled 20 big garbage bags with clippings and garden waste for the municipal green pickup! You should have seen the pile at the curb. I feel like I should have got some sort of Amazon woman award for that! Once the beds are presentable again, I will move my attention to my beloved square-foot vegetable garden.

My handsome and kind-hearted garden supervisor

After the slow, cold beginning to the spring, this week has been remarkably sunny and warm. If you blink, you can miss an important change in the garden. Leaves have opened. Flowers are blooming. We have our first sparrow family too. It's a beautiful time of year.

Signs of Spring

Do you know how you can tell if I've been working on prints for my Etsy shop?  Well, I tend to be as grumpy as a bear and I uncharacteristically growl the odd four-letter word. I take Meeko for his walks while trying to ease my tense muscles and muttering aloud about throwing my computer and printer into the garbage. The past few days have been full of many ups and downs including a rebel green phase that my printer decided to go through at about noon today. Literally everything that it spit out was tinged with green. Everything.  I decided that it needed a nap and I needed a walk and that seemed to do the trick.

How do I feel when my machines have finally cooperated and my new prints are finished and up to my high standards? Relieved and happy!

How can you tell if I'm looking forward to spring? Every single print I added to my Etsy shop today included flowers! Yesterday I saw five robins at one time in our tree in the backyard. I'm not certain if it was a sure sign of spring or of mass avian confusion but it was a splendid, unusual sight to see.

Technology willing, I will have more new prints in my shop later this week. :)

Late Gifts

I worked on a painting this weekend of a small bouquet of violas I picked as I was emptying some pots in the garden.  I never have the heart to toss anything out if it's still remotely in bloom.  There are some people who tend to their gardens according to their watches and calendars.  I will wait as long as some flowers are there which means occasionally I can get backed into a wall of snow.

Here's the mug of violas in progress alongside a pansy painting I did a while ago

As I was working on my painting, I was thinking that for sure it was the last bouquet of the season. Then yesterday, I found a bunch of verbena still growing in a pot that I usually abandon outside all winter.  There was enough for not just one bouquet, but two! Talk about late garden gifts.

I think it points to what a temperate November we have had.  I would have enjoyed a little more light some days but it's hard to complain when I am still gathering flowers in late November! The temperatures are definitely changing.  The high didn't go above zero yesterday and tonight they are calling for freezing rain.

I have spent more time indoors than outdoors this week.  I have been working hard on converting my paintings into prints and have added a few more to my Etsy store.  Here's one of them:

I received a couple more orders on the weekend. When you open a new shop, it's hard waiting for the orders but so exciting when they do start coming in.  My youngest daughter Chloé saw how happy I was and, spur of the moment, decided to make me this cake to celebrate. (I posted this photo on my Facebook page, but decided to share it here for those who don't go on Facebook.)   She was limited by what we had in our kitchen drawer so my Etsy celebration cake was decorated with Winnie the Pooh candles, smurf-blue icing and sugar pearls we bought in Paris this past summer.  It was beautiful and delicious!

Here's a funny little story. A few days ago, Chloé asked me if we were going to have any guests at our place for Thanksgiving.  I said 'Pardon?'--not because I hadn't heard her, but because I wanted her to repeat the question to see if she realized what she had said.

You see we live in Canada and we celebrate our Thanksgiving in October!  It shows you what a big impact the U.S. celebration has on us. Chloé is not a kid who gets confused easily. We see the American Thanksgiving mentioned on cooking shows, in magazines, on blogs and on television shows to the point that we feel that we are celebrating along with you!

To all of my U.S. readers, good luck with all of your preparations, travel and celebrations.  I will be offering a special in my Etsy shop over the weekend, so be sure to have a look!

Pansies: My First Digital Print

I have been working so hard the past few days on trying to produce prints of my paintings.  My printer seems to be quite temperamental.  It has moments when it obstinately refuses to do anything. Occasionally, I can be that way too. Stubborn character aside, it is finally producing some very beautiful results.

I wanted to share my first digital print of a painting.  It's a painting that you haven't seen before.  The painting is of a pot of pansies, nemesia, diascia and euphorbia that I had on my back porch a summer ago.   The framed images you see in this post are of the print.  I feel that it looks very similar to my original watercolour image (seen below).

Pansies are one of the most cheerful garden flowers I know and they are a favourite of mine. They belong to the viola family.  I usually grow both pansies and violas. I love how despite their sweet appearance they are one of the hardiest flowers in the garden. They can brave chilly weather, even snow, at the start and end of the gardening season.

They have a really special childhood association for me. I spent most of my childhood in Toronto but we travelled frequently to the western outskirts of Montreal to visit my grandparents.  My mom's dad turned to gardening when he retired and he was a master at it.  He won all sorts of prizes from the local horticultural association for his beautiful roses. I would follow my grandmother around as she fed the birds and squirrels in the backyard and tended to the annuals. One of my favourite memories is of her letting me pick pansies from the garden to put in the beautiful silver and glass posy vase she owned.  

My grandmother and I were very close and I was very sad when she died.  I was twenty years old at the time. The memory of gathering pansies with her was so special to me that I tracked down an almost identical vase for myself years later from an antique dealer.

And, oh yes, one more thing.  My grandmother's name was Viola.

*  *  *  *  *

GIVEAWAY

To celebrate my progress and the production of my first print, I am going to give away one unframed Pansies print to one of my blog readers.  

All you need to do is add a comment on this post before midnight (Eastern time) this Friday, October 7th.  Please make sure that I have a link or your email address, so I can contact you if you are the winner.  I will post the name of the winner on Saturday afternoon.

Here's a little information for those of you who like to know about the technical side of things.  The image measures about 5½ inches across and 4¼ inches down.  It fits perfectly in a Ikea Ribba frame (in photo) or any frame with a 5 x 7 inch opening. The paper itself measures 8 x 10 inches. The print is on very beautiful cold press, natural white archival paper that is made in Italy. It has the feel, weight and look of watercolour paper. It is 100% cotton fiber and is acid and lignin free. It is printed with Epson Ultrachrome inks and a whole lot of love.