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!
