Great News! The World of Watercolour Competition

I am so excited to learn that two of my paintings have moved to the third level of judging in the World Watercolor Competition sponsored by "The Art of Watercolour", the watercolor magazine published in France. I wanted to share this with you, and so I thought that it may be interesting to you to see the steps in the creation of these paintings.  

My First Reference Photograph   I decided to put the set-up on a mirror. These are the two photos that I used for my composition.     I began the drawing with the central tulip. I knew that if I got the size of it correctly, I would be able to relate all of the others to it. I decided to paint the colorful facets of the vase and the fabrics around the vase and tulips first. This would frame the tulips and I thought it would be helpful in judging where to go next in the painting. Green was introduced into the negative spaces around the subject. I knew that using the complement of the rose and reds of the tulips would set up a "color interaction" between the reds and the green.

I continued with the patterns on the fabric. Perhaps you can see the value changes in the folds of the fabric. I painted the shadows in the folds using a wet in wet technique, and after that was dry, the stripes and flowers, and also the geometric patterns were added; I was also careful to change the colors and values of the strips as they moved from the light into the shadowed areas.

 

I'll continue this demonstration tomorrow. Please leave me a comment if you have thoughts about it.