Monday, July 22, 2013

One person's roadside weed is another's garden of inspiration...

It's Queen Anne's lace (Bishop's lace or wild carrot) time in Iowa. Aside from it's unpleasant invading nature, a field of these blooms, backlit by a July sunset, says summer to me. This year I've captured the ubiquitous roadside plants in a small square composition. Along with a few other invasives, thistle, clover, vetch, and those wacky little buckhorn plantains that have seed heads like cone shaped pencil eraser tops, Queen Anne's lace figures into our mental picture of many regional landscapes almost as much as the native plants do.



3 comments:

Julie Clay Illustration said...

Lovely work, liked your last post too, the dark line around those illustrations makes for a unique look that is popular now. I think this weed you mention is cow parsley?? it has been used in such a lot of patterns/cards etc lately. There's lots of it about here too, but I don't think I've seen it closed up like that. :)

Julia Kelly said...

Wonderful thistles- love you picked the "weeds" to illustrate!

Claudia said...

Thanks you two! Cow Parsley- a rose by an other name...yes, I think it is Quenn Anne's Lace. Clustery flowers. How to illustrate without getting too tweedly on the details? I'm jazzed about roadside weeds right now, at their zenith. Hope you are both enjoying the summer!

Blog Archive