The Best Laid Plans

I am trying to do a bit more sketching so this afternoon I decide to sketch the hollyhocks in my garden... they are huge and a sort of creamy colour with pink centres. Anyway I have never managed to produce a cream colour in watercolour and decided the white of the paper would be quite close so worked with that.

My plan was to actually do some botanical studies so that I could begin to learn the shape for when I would paint in my own style. I find that if you know and understand the shape of the flower you want to paint you can then get a sort of template in your mind, which is a way of painting it that works for you. I have my template with flowers like roses (learned from the Jean Haines way of painting them), pinks and carnations, hydrangeas, daisies, daffodils, gerberas, snowdrops etc and what you have to do is find the essence which makes it that particular flower. So I was going to find it by doing a proper study.... yeah right!!!

I decided to start with one particular flower then forgot all my good intentions and the composition just seemed to grow and grow and before I knew it, I had filled a double page in my sketch book from top to bottom!!

Having said that I am really quite pleased with this as I love the colour combinations... all W&N, my lovely Turquoise, Permanent Rose and Green Gold. When you are painting white flowers, you don't need to keep all the flowers white in fact the painting won't work half as well as they will have a tendency to look stuck on to the bg. Though I drew this (don't forget I was meant to be doing a formal study as normally I don't draw flowers) I have still lost edges on the flower heads and leaves and this helps marry the flowers into the bg.

I started by adding the greens to the stems and leaves, losing quite a bit into the bg, and guiding the paint with water around the flower heads to keep them white. I also added the other colours to the bg and as the flower areas were dry the paint didn't flow (paint will only flow where it's wet.....you need the water to transport it) so the flowers in the main stayed white though I did wet small areas to allow some of the paint to flow in especially on the bottom sides.

Once you have reached this stage it is simply a matter of building up the bg, painting negatively and positively around the piece until it is time to step back and see if it's finished. This piece is approx 4x8 so not a normal size for me but I will use what I've learned from this to do a bigger painting and probably keep to the same colour scheme... let me know what you think!!

Brusho Playtime

Continuing with the daffodils I decided to try Brusho... I love that stuff but tend to always gravitate to watercolour? Not sure why, anyway, I have a couple of workshops coming up so  thought I had better Brusho up my skills!!

I still have my bunch on the window so just used a single bloom and did two slightly different positions to get two fairly similar compositions and use slightly different colour schemes and techniques.

For the first I used Lime Green, UB, yellow, orange and scarlet and instead of creating a textured wash ended up with a smooth but colourful light wash using lots of water to wash away the crystals. At this stage I wasn't too keen as it seemed a little flat and uninteresting. I then worked in a more traditional watercolour way dropping colour in, washing away creating little channels of colour down the paper then also worked around the flower making negative, postive, soft, lost and found edges and I think it has produced a lovely soft fresh piece.

For this next one I swapped the scarlet for purple..... my thinking was it would give me more contrast with the yellow though I like the blue and blue/green I 've  used in the previous one.

I left the initial wash with more much texture stopping the mixing before it went too far and then worked more purple into the background against the yellow. I much preferred this one at this stage and it looked more like the normal Brusho work I do. I did go back in before the orange in the centre was dry and I think that is why I partly don't like it as much as it has got a little bit muddy around the flower and to me the flower head looks a bit overworked. I also haven't lost the edges on this........ no particular reason why.... but I think also adds to the feeling it is overworked. Hubby prefers this one by the way, says it has more going on... we are sooooo compatible!!

A Lonely Yellow Daffodil

I have learned from a number of artists (Jean Haines being one) to paint in the seasons and this post embraces just that ....

Our garden is very much a Spring garden with lots of daffodils, tulips, forsythia bushes, azaleas etc and though we have done the trick of visiting the garden centre each month and buying perennials in flower it still remains at it's prettiest in the Spring. However, we never seem to have as many daffs as the previous year and keep having to plant more.....our neighbour says it is because hubby is such a "tidy gardener" he displaces the bulbs as the Summer and Autumn progress, but can hardly give him a slap for that!!

Anyway all this is a roundabout way of telling you  how I came to paint my one daffodil... the winds arrived the other day and flattened one lonely daff which we brought in and popped into water.... it was making the garden untidy so had to be removed!!

Here are some of the sketches, again I am working here to give myself a sort of "template" for painting them, so I used the method of painting (which I have learned from Jean and Joanne Boon Thomas) where I paint some of the flower then lose it (not all) but enough to give a loose feel then working back in to add some of the edges I have lost.  I think I have given myself enough to work on to produce a full piece.... I have painted two face on and one to the side but you really don't need a full bunch of daffs (or any flowers for that matter) to give yourself a composition for a full painting... just use the flower you have and paint it from different angles. I would add some buds as well if I was doing a full painting so would maybe use 3 flowers, a bud, half open and fully open to create a full bunch of daffs. As to composition, might be an idea to draw a quick sketch, could be an "s" shape, a "v" shape, "l" shape, whatever you feel works and I will be having a go in the next few days

I decided the colours were bit boring in the first two so added some purple and turquoise in the last one which I really like and that's the palette I will work with when I do a full piece.