Day 9 of 30-Day Leaf Art: Inspired by Frangipani Leaves

When I saw the vein network of the Frangipani leaves today morning, I immediately had an idea as to what I may want to do. The crisp, prominent, compartmentalized veins, I thought, would lend themselves nicely for a stained glass-like effect on paper. The other vision that I had was of how the Frangipani leaves would portray our family. With these pictures in mind, I came back home and sketched five frangipani leaves in my art journal.

Read on to see more pictures and to know my concept behind the leaf-family vision and the art technique.

So, my vision was of a big Frangipani leaf spreading out a protective aura (of the guardian angel) over four smaller leaves that represent my family – my hubby, myself, Pari and my baby in the womb.

And the art technique was to create stain glass-like effect, which I did by outlining the leaf skeleton with three dimensional pearl acrylic colours and then filling the rectangular spaces with paint.

The pearl paint I used has a wonderful sheen, which doesn’t really show in these pictures, no matter – daylight or artificial light.

I wanted to do something subtle in the background, so created textured effect by stamping with wine cork. I applied pearl white paint on the surface of the wine cork and stamped around the leaves. Then, overlaid a few stamped circles with lavendar coloured dots to create the impression of flowers.

And, now about the ‘White Fangipani’ (Plumeria obtusa) per se. According to the field guide – Trees of Delhi – it’s a small near-evergreen tree bearing clusters of fragrant flowers with narrow, pure-white petals and a deep-yellow throat in the centre. There are two main varieties (obtusa and sericifolia) and dozens of cultivars but as the botanical name suggests, all forms have rounded, blunt leaves which help to distinguish it from other frangipanis (Plumeria rubra – its leaves have pointy apex and flowers range from pink to deep crimson).

The genus Plumeria has literally hundreds of varied forms and hybrids making it difficult for Botanists to separate them into species. Some years ago, botanists believed there were nearly 50 species of Plumeria! In Delhi though, only two species are grown – Plumeria rubra and Plumeria obtusa. Of the two, rubra is more common here.

Both the species of Frangipani are also called ‘Champa’ or Temple Trees here in India.