Tuesday 29 March 2016

Daffodil Time!!

Like  many painters, I like to paint what is in season and Spring Flowers are my favourites to paint mainly because for me they signify sunshine and a hint that some warmer weather may be on the way!!

As many of you will know we have a puppy (well he's actually one today, but still very young) and he seems to love digging up bulbs so at the start of the year we had no idea what spring bulbs we were going to have in the garden this year if any. We had a bit of a scare a couple of weeks ago...as we have seen the daffodil bulbs growing we have realised that the bulbs which are to his taste are the tulips. Well,  the other night having let him out, he wasn't too happy to come back and we became concerned he had eaten a few...licking his lips and soil around his muzzle sort of gave the game away!! We know he has eaten the odd one in the past and not come to any harm but we suspected this time he had had a few more.

I checked the internet to find they are poisonous and some dogs have died consuming them so ended up ringing the emergency vet service but no answer. Anyway I decided to watch him carefully and ring again if he started to display any signs.....apparently they start panting and drinking lots as they can cause an irritation in the mouth and oesophagus and all he was doing was going to sleep... so after an hour or so I decided he either hadn't eaten that many or he isn't too susceptible to them!

Anayway I digress... back to the daffodils!! I just cut one for my reference and took it with me to my art group last night. Last year I only used one as well, I simply turn them around placing them in different positions to create my composition. I did a daffodil painting last year and was really quite pleased with it but was unsure as to whether it was finished. I am a member of a watercolour critique group and to be fair, the consensus there was, that is was finished but I still didn't feel it was... anyway I worked it more and unfortunately lost the spontaneity of it.....lesson learned!!

So this time I wanted to do a similar composition, and see if I could nail it without overworking. I used the same colours but different brand. I have become an ambassador for the MaimerBlu range of paints and have to say I am liking them!! I tried to get the same pigment numbers I have in my W&N and Schmincke paints so they are working nicely for me.

The palette was purple, lemon yellow, turquoise, and orange. These colours are compliments so as well as light dark contrast I can achieve colour contrast too and hopefully a combination of both. As my work shows, I do seem to be drawn to a cooler palette, blues, greens, purples, yellows are some of my favourites.

I didn't finish this at the group but worked on it again today while starting another. I decided to do an different composition and settle on a horizontal one for the piece and also used a different palette.

Lemon yellow, cobalt blue, ub, a cool red, orange so still able to get some coolish greens the red allows me to get a purple... here are the two so far....




 I am also working on a couple of others at the moment... I used them as a study piece for the last workshop I did in Oswestry so I have a lovely vase of flowers to work from now



1 comment:

  1. My eye is drawn to the portrait version... it is lovely. My daffodils didn't bloom this year, too much rain I've been told.

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