Looking at the plants on the river bank and thinking about which to draw, I’m reminded of a painting that I keep going back to – The Great Piece of Turf by Albrecht Dürer, 1503, painted in watercolour and body colour.
Each blade of grass and every leaf has been meticulously painted. It has a natural composition and I imagine the whole turf was dug up and taken back to the studio to draw. I like the fact that the dandelions have finished flowering – there are no beautiful flowers here and even some of the plant roots are revealed – it seems a very truthful drawing.
There’s a debate about whether or not Dürer made up the composition as it is thought to be too good to just occur naturally. I like to think he went out looking for and dug up exactly the right composition and took it back to his studio to paint, largely unaltered. I think the clod of earth in the paintings gives a sense of the rootedness and ordinariness of the plants. The Great Piece of Turf seems very contemporary in that it preferences the plants’ natural habitat and ecology over cultural appreciation.
Dürer made many plant studies and (along with da Vinci) was an early pioneer of botanical art. Though this is probably his most famous botanical painting, Dürer painted several ‘pieces of turf’…
Celandine, watercolour and body colour*, 28.7 x 14.9cm | Columbine, watercolour and body colour*, 35.5 x 28.7cm | The Small Piece of Turf, body colour*, 40.8 x 31.5cm
- * “Body colour is the use of opaque colours for highlights or dense, flat areas. It’s a technique that has been used in watercolour for centuries. Before Designers Gouache was introduced in 1937, the only method of achieving opacity was to use white on its own, or to use it to make tints of the watercolours.” (www.winsornewton.com)
The River Crane has some great ‘pieces of turf’, where plants have rooted into soil deposited along the margins. Some of these are easy to lift up and take back to the studio.
One piece, containing a ladies thumb, an unidentified plant and a (dead) common ragwort, I took back to draw. The plants look as though they are only just surviving – and yet they are probably thriving! I have drawn them on a piece of recycled plywood, in charcoal and acrylic paint.
(Dead) common ragwort and other plants, charcoal and acrylic on plywood, 122 x 88cm
