|Spring Green, Sunlight and the Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens|
11" x 16" pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Folio Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell
The Lake has a huge amount of waterfowl and they're all very territorial.
They tried it once or twice and the swan steamed in with wings set to "ack ack" mode and saw them off. After which they took to marching up and down on the bank with occasional forays for a bit of weed from the edge. We were sat there so long they began to ignore us so it was fascinating to watch.
In the meantime the gardeners seemed to be getting rid of prunings although it did sound rather more like they putting an enormous tree through the shredder as the noise was so loud.
Then the mallards had periodic races across the top of the lake. They seemed to be keen to see how long they could skip across the top of the water before they had to take off
The coots were being noisy as per usual (when are they ever not?)
Every once in a while some other Canada Geese would practice display landings by swooping in and doing a very "look at me" landing in the middle of the lake. Boys will be boys.....
Believe it or not the sketch is not quite so luminous as the leaves were. I had the combination of brand spanking new leaves with that incredible green - lit from behind by the sun - at the same time as the sky changed so it became violet blue as it thought about having a thunderstorm. Thankfully that held off until we got home!
Link: The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew