Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Roses

The Pruner; Rose Garden, Exposition Park, L.A. 2011
My son made it into the State Science Fair and we drove to Los Angeles for two days of judging and exhibits. While he was explaining his project to the judges I went outside to explore the adjacent Rose Garden.
Exposition park has a very large formal garden planted to separate beds; one variety to each bed. So there are rectangles of white, red, yellow, mauve, purple and orange flowers. It was too hot to catch the scent unless you pushed your nose deep into the blossoms.
As I waited outside on a shaded bench surrounded by hundreds of roses and a fountain
and the Beaux-Arts Style architecture; I pulled out my always-handy but rarely-used field sketchbook and colors.
It was early morning and there were workers out pruning and watering.
This man was heavily built and had a baseball cap, slate blue outfit and rust colored apron and white work gloves as he went about the beds deadheading and pruning out the still in FULL bloom May blossoming.

This is somewhat compressed and made up. I did sketch the general layout but as I filled in the color I sort of abandoned the careful layout if favor of flowing greens and spots of color.

It seemed to be favorite walking spot of elderly Korean women with colored umbrellas (for shade--it was 90F degrees yesterday) and big sneakers and white cotton gloves.
They all stopped to look over my shoulder but were too polite to say anything.
I like the riot of colors even if I had wanted the man to be lost in a sea of flowers but he ended up being the focus and subject.

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