Caught by the bug!

It seems dandelions in paint are as hard to escape as dandelions in the garden are! Once I started thinking of them I was surprised to come up with several different ideas for colours and compositions so I am going to explore more in the next few weeks, see what I can come up with!

Here is one more I've done, this time sticking to a cooler palette of colours. I really love these shades of blue and green together!

Dandelion on Jade and Blue
10" x 10", watercolour on paper

The exciting news is that this, with several more of my floral watercolours, might be appearing on greeting cards throughout the UK very soon! As soon as things are finalised I will share the details here.

A return to an old favourite

A few years ago, I was a little obsessed with painting dandelions. I don't know how many I did, but they were popular and always sold quickly. Eventually I grew tired of the same subject and moved onto other things. Last week I was contacted by a small, independent greeting card company who are interested in making cards using some of my work, and the owner mentioned how much he liked the dandelions! I almost groaned, but then I thought "why not?" so here are my two new dandelion paintings!

Cobalt Wishes

Three O'Clock

Hopefully they'll be what the company were thinking of!

Cathedral Gold WIP

I had this reference, golden lilies in the gardens of Hereford Cathedral, in my "to paint" file for several years, but somehow I always passed it over. I imagine I was avoiding the numerous challenges it offered - the first being yellow! It's so hard to shade yellow without ending up with mud. My pet hate is the recommended complementary colour, violet, which results in a dull grey. I prefer to use colours which are closer to yellow - orange and red.

Stage one, I'm already getting some good form in the flowers using azo yellow, winsor yellow deep and alizarin crimson. The background is started using the yellows and indanthrene blue.


The first lily is pretty much done now, the stamens are painted in a strong red made with WYD and AC.


Starting to add form to the main flower, while also working on the background elements. My second challenge was the foliage, and I chose to keep it fairly loose with quick brushstrokes in AY and adding blue wet in wet.


Taking shape nicely now, most of the background flowers are done.


Now the really strong shadows are added to the main lily, using an orange made with AC and WYD. The last of the foliage is painted in the same way as the rest.


Now to finish the background and another dilemma - do I paint over the fiddly foliage or paint around it? I decided on a combination of both so some would be more defined and others would blend into the rest of the background.


A few finishing touches and it's done!