Saturday 8 February 2014

Rose

A few weeks ago I decided to paint a flower. I thought it would be a 'start today - finish tomorrow' sort of painting, but boy, was I wrong. First of all I didn't have as much time as I'd planned and had to work in many short sessions as opportunities presented themselves. I don't like working like that, especially with watercolours. Secondly, and more importantly, I found it much harder than I'd expected and just couldn't get the colours blending together the way I wanted them. I found some of my glazes turning to mud and it took me a while to realise it was whenever I used Alizaron Crimson as part of the mix. I suppose all of you experts out there already knew this, but I didn't. Several times I 'lifted off' the muddy area's and tried again. I finally achieved a result I could settle with and so I'm calling it 'finished'.

But I think I've made a very bad mistake with regards to composition. To give the flower bloom a grounding I invented some foliage but I'm not at all happy with the way it looks. It's too contrived and I now think a single stem with just 3 or 4 leaves would have been better. Anyway, it's all about 'learning' and I certainly learned a lot doing this one.

On a positive note, it's not that long ago I'd have attempted something like this using single washes and going wet-in-wet, which is not something I'm good at. I feel that by using many layers I've achieved a much greater depth to the painting. It may be a more time consuming and fiddly process, but it pays dividends with something like this.