Monday, March 3, 2014

Flower Power is Finished!

When I left you last, I had written about my second attempt at this painting. I hope my experience working through this will be helpful to you as you paint in your own space.
I was somewhat happy with my second attempt, but it was still not what I hoped for. This time I cut a 34 x 38" piece of hot press paper, taped a nice wide border around it and started all over again.


First of all, I masked out each of the flowers, and spattered some maskoid on the background. I wanted a variety of sizes of spatter so I used different size brushes, and changed the direction of the way I held the brush so that the spatter would make an interesting pattern.
Once the spattering was dry, I painted the figure using all watercolor (no fluid acrylics); instead of realistic colors for her hair, I used sienna, violet, mauve, brown, and green.
 I knew that

I would be able to drop in all of my spring greens on the background and let them mingle on the paper; by adding more pigment and drops of water, I could create lots of blooms and run-backs, which is just what I wanted.
 (I know, usually in watercolor,
these are the very things we try to avoid!)

After the background was dry, I removed the mask on the all the spatters, and the flowers. The final step was painting the flowers. BUT, after finishing the flowers, I decided that I wanted to darken the value of the background, especially on the left side of the figure.
So, I repainted the whole left side, painting around each flower.

 Once it was all dry, the last thing was spattering some opaque white on the background. These little spatters added additional sparkle to the painting.

Flower Power

I am happy with this painting as it really expresses my feelings.
It's a far cry from the photo and definitely a giant leap from my first attempt.

I am sharing this with you in the hope that it will be an encouragement to you. There are times when we just have to persevere until we accomplish what we are dreaming of.

In my next post, I'll share some ways that I make decisions about making changes in a painting without having to make corrections on the paper.
Until then, happy painting! 

If you have questions, or comments, please do leave them here; I'd love to hear from you!

2 comments:

  1. I loved reading about this process, Evelyn! It was very informative and interesting to follow the decisions you made along the way and then to see the final product and how it differed from the first two attempts..

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  2. Wonderful account of your working through a painting, Evelyn! I am reminded of editing in writing, and of how worthwhile it is to persist, as you say. Beautiful portrait in the end!

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