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.

12 comments:

  1. The rose is absolutely beautiful, and I don't agree on the leaves, to me this is perfection !

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    1. Thank you very Jane, I'm glad you like it. ;-)

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  2. Hi John.
    A woderful painting. All the best.
    Vic.

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  3. What a beautiful rose has become. I just miss some shadow behind the rose.

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    1. That's a good point Renske. I didn't think of shadows.

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  4. The rose is beautiful.

    For me, the leaves look to narrow, less rounded than rose leaves, and I feel they need to be darker. Just my opinion.

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    1. Thanks Sue. Many of the leaves aren't Rose leaves but those that are could certainly be darker.

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  5. You've done a good job with the rose John. I have to agree about the placement of the leaves though, rose leaves wouldn't appear like a rosette around the flower in real life.

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    1. You're not wrong Frank but many years ago my mother used to do Flower Arranging and one of her favourite things was a single Rose bloom surrounded by a selection of foliage. I think that's what was in my mind when I did this. But, as I said in my post, it hasn't worked as I'd hoped. Thanks for the comment.

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  6. A beautyful rose John. About colours: I have started to paint mostly with primary colours to avoid getting muddy colours and to learn more about the mixing, plus some other favourite colours of mine that I can´t do without. Some colours I use very very little of, but I still need them sometimes; as Viridian green. I use Viridian only as shadow on top of red. It doesn´t get muddy. Oh, I should do a post about colours. I´m not an expert about it, but I can atleast tell about what I have found out during my own painting. Anyway John: I think your rose looks great, perfect values and all. How are you coping with the bad weather in england? Hope you don´t have that much of a problem! Take care now and see you soon!

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    1. That's a great idea to paint mostly with primary colours Catharina - I'll have to try that. Thank you for the lovely comment about my Rose. As for the weather, I am fortunate to live in a mild area on highish ground, so I'm coping just fine, but it's dreadful for thousands of others. We had 5-months rain in 19 days and I feel so sorry for those less fortunate than me.
      Take care. ;-)

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