Many stone fruit trees make excellent subjects for painting since they can have such interesting contrasts when in bloom. The plum is one of the four gentlemen of Chinese painting. There is a gnarled old lichen covered peach tree stump in the front yard of a house in my street, which had sprouted one single sprig of flowers for spring.

This was painted from memory in ink and watercolour on a 105x150mm piece of gessoed plywood. The second lower sprig and broken twig were added a few days later when I thought it would make for a better composition.


I took a photo of the subject a few days later using a light painting technique, which necessitated stalking about in the late evening.


I think maybe I should have included a few leaves in the painting which would have added to the contrasts, but they hadn't yet grown on the sprig when I initially observed it and the thought didn't occur to me.