Art Pearls

I did this painting after the challenge no. 24 of  A Nos Pinceux blog. I chose this photo  in the spirit of the arrival of spring season. I also love the vase featured in the reference photo and I just couldn’t wait to paint it. This is also the second time I am painting on yellow flowers. The first one I painted a few years back was an epic fail. I had no clue how to do the shadow in yellow flowers and after reading the watercolor forum discussion in wetcanvas that yellow flowers are difficult to paint, I lost all the motivation to paint yellow flowers. In fact I avoided painting any yellow flowers that catch my fancy. I used to drool over the yellow floral paintings of other successful water colorists. Over the years, I learned from online that you can use colors like green, burnt sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre  and even purple in shadow areas. I used a few of these colors in the shadow areas of this painting. I am pretty much happy with the outcome.I used lampblack in this painting too.

I am not really crazy about the support I am using. It seems there is not much sizing on the Strathmore 500 Series. The water I laid down in the first wash dried up pretty fast. So I had to do wet on dry most of the time. I am not going to buy this support anymore. Usually I like to do a controlled wet on wet wash. So far Arches is still the winner for me.