Draw What You Love!

Karma sometimes has it in for you, you hit a rough patch and don't know what to draw. Your mind is occupied, or life has some challenges ahead and your thoughts wander off, you can't settle down to draw and anyway "What should I draw?" My art school tutor had a solution for just this scenario; draw what you love! Some people would draw their loved ones, but I'm no portrait painter, some people would draw their pet but I don't have one. Sooooo ........ need I say more? Ginspiration!

G&T in my mum's favourite Star of Edinburgh glass (I was being modest, so it was just a small one.), I'll tell you those facets and reflections were a real challenge!

After a Scottish doctor discovered the anti-malarial properties of quinine in the 1700's the British army officers in India in the early 19th century added water, sugar and lime to the bitter-tasting quinine to make it palatable, and of course gin! So, really it is medicine. Quinine itself is won from the bark of the so-called "fever tree" seen here in my sketch.

Gin is made of juniper berries, other botanicals like orris root (which comes from irises), liquorice and coriander contribute to the distinctive flavour of the different brands. Iris Germanica grows in my garden.
I was horrified to read at the beginning of the year that juniper in the UK was being blighted by a fungus, the end of London Dry Gin as we know it!! I've still got some berries, although dried (in Germany we use them for cooking), you can see them in the first photo, however, I don't think I've enough for Gin production. What an awful thought; yes, yes I know that my New Year's resolution was to drink less of it, and no as a resolution it didn't survive the first week, but at least I wanted to have the choice. Maybe I need to start a campaign to save juniper, without it no "ginspiration!" and what would I draw then?