Spring Has Come

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.

Thread Spools in a Creamer

This painting is done for the Challenge # 33 of the Rookie Painter blog.  This is also the first time I am bravely using lamp black for a painting. From this challenge, I have learned that we can successfully use tube black paint in watercolor IF we know exactly what we are doing. The most important thing is never use the black paint directly onto the painting. It must always be layered over another color and then glazed to get the desired value. The slopping on the black paint directly will give you a dull, lifeless black; especially if the black pigment you are using is semi-transparent. I am not aware of any transparent black pigment and maybe this does not apply if the black pigment is opaque. Any watercolorist who have played around with black paint is welcome to comment here. Using lamp black for this painting has opened me to the possibilities of using it in my future paintings. For that I am so eager to try out and learn.

Almost 8 by 10 inches on Strathmore 500 watercolor paper