In between putting veggie starts in the garden, staking drooping peonies and irises, and chasing crows away (that’s a story I mean to tell later!) I keep getting back to searching the holy grail for painting watercolor florals. So before getting even farther behind posting, here are the latest. Call them experiments, studies, paintings, whatever you wish. They are reviving my abiding love of watercolors, the medium that, over 30 years ago, led to me calling myself an artist.
I had to dig out an old Robert E. Wood palette, never used and now absolutely perfect for the level of pigment intensely needed when painting wetly!
Lately I’ve been pulling out some of the granulating pigments I’d stashed away. Artist quality watercolor tube paints usually keep for years. I found a tube of Sennelier Quinacridone Purple and put it to work on those violety pink blooms and the DS Moonglow is spectacular with yellows. So I’ve been doing lots of playing with water and new color mixes and gotten out some of my softer, natural hair brushes as well as bamboo pen.
Sometimes I look at flowers in an arrangement or singly and try to copy the details, and other times I’m responding and inventing as the water moves the pigments.
My first white irises might have gotten overworked, but hopefully the shapes are stored in memory now.
Purple irises are blooming now and I added Carbazole Violet to the palette and did some scraping texture with the bamboo pen and line with a watercolor pencil.
No flower name necessary here for the sensation of vigorous colorful growth.
The peonies are the show stoppers, but get out there and catch them now! They’ll be gone in a flash with summer’s early arrival.
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