Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

We hadn't mown the lawn for a few weeks and the daisies were taking over..... wonderful!  I know that most gardeners think of them as weeds, but I love them.... they cheer up boring green lawns! I took a bunch of photos, knowing that I had to paint them.

Wild Daisies
7" x 7"
Watercolour on Fabriano Artistico paper

I wanted the painting to be loose to suit the subject, starting by pouring water in rivulets down the paper and dropping yellow and a touch of rose into the wet area, letting the colours merge.  Then I spattered weak quin. rose in places.  I am usually too nervous to do this kind of thing when a painting is almost finished, afraid to ruin all that work, so it makes sense to get it out of the way early!  

After that, it was just a case of painting around the petals (I rarely use masking fluid now since discovering several older works had yellowed where masking had been). I used very juicy azo yellow and pthalo blue for a vibrant background, letting the colours do their own mixing on the paper.  The flower centres were added using azo and cadmium yellow, then I painted the pthalo blue shadows and tiny gaps between the petals using the background colours.  I might just paint more, it was fun to use this extremely limited palette!

5 comments:

Studio at the Farm said...

Ruth, it is a beautiful and fresh painting. Good job!

Sadami said...

Hi, Ruth, lovely work!
Thank you for sharing the info on colours and a process.
Cheers, Sadami

debwardart said...

Love this one and the poppies. You have captured the essence of watercolor with both. I can never do that, always way too tight. Good job!

Anonymous said...

Really , really ,lovely. Daisies are such simple flowers but here they look gloriously rich and complex.

maría josé said...

Todo un espectáculo de luz y color!