Spring in southern Australia is brutally short — six good weeks if you're lucky. A custom paint-by-numbers of your garden at peak bloom is the easiest way to hold onto it.
Photograph it now. Paint it slowly through October and November. Hang it before summer flattens everything again.
Photographing the Garden
Early morning or late afternoon — flat midday sun blows out the colour. Get down low to one or two hero plants rather than trying to capture the whole bed.
Native gardens (grevillea, banksia, kangaroo paw) paint beautifully because the colour blocks are bold and graphic.
Garden Subjects That Work
A single wisteria draped over a fence. A rose archway. The veggie patch at peak harvest. The frangipani that came with the house. The grandmother's hydrangeas.
Avoid: dense foliage with no focal point, or anything backlit so harshly the colour is lost.
Paint It Outside
If the weather plays nicely, paint your spring garden in the spring garden. Set up a small folding table, take a thermos of tea, and let the bees do their thing.
It's the most Australian version of plein-air there is.
Gardens change. Photographs fade. A painted version, slow and hand-made from your own photo, is the one that stays.
— Be Artistic Club