This weeks subject for my classes is Snowdrops and over the past few weeks ideas about how to paint them have been going through my mind. At Art Club I had finished the piece I was working on and wanted something to do for a few minutes.
Using a scrap piece of paper I quickly drew out three snowdrop flower heads. I wanted something a bit different behind the flower heads so I used phthalo blue which is also called “intense blue” to paint a rough background. I then used cadmium yellow straight onto the paper and voilà green leaves removing the need for mixing a green. I damped the heads of the flowers with clean water and added a small amount of purple lake to give the flowers a bit of shape – as you can see the blue decided to run as well! The two “ghostly” flowers in the top right were drops of water which got there by accident – oh well, let’s improvise and add a stalk!!.
Snowdrops with Phthalo Blue Background
All in all quite an interesting experiment – a bright blue background which is a bit unusual and green leaves without the need to mix any colours in the palette!
Total time taken roughly five minutes!
3 comments
only you could produce such a painting after so little time…I think it is called talent !!! Marion
Did you paint the background first around your drawing. Did you use masking fluid for the white of the flowers?
I shall have ago at home seeing as I missed the class.
Author
Marian, Yes I painted the background first, round the white flowers which I left as plain paper (no masking fluid). If you want to see what we produced at class this week have a look here