While the flowers are still round the house it is tempting to continue working with them. This has presented me with a problem that I hadn't thought of until Ray commented on my last post. I was a little dissatisfied with the last effort and felt even more so with the first of these. The reason being they have a tight feeling about them that makes them look a little laboured.
Regular readers will recognise the same old problem, a difficulty in remaining loose throughout a painting. The only reason I can think of relates to moving between oil and watercolour. The two media require different considerations in technique and it has become clear to me that I need to think a little more carefully when shifting between the media.
Bouquet 2 - Watercolour on Not paper 14" x 11"The next one is a study of one flower extracted from the bunch. An exercise in wet into wet. Choosing the right moment to introduce the second colour and getting the correct consistency of paint are the two challenges in this process. I'm not too unhappy about the way these experiments have worked on this one.
Rose - Watercolour on Not paper 14" x 11"
6 comments:
Difficult to comment Mick without seeing a photo of the original flowers. A first `off the top' opinion would be that you have too many hard edges and the painting doesn't meet the 50/50 rule. Also have you followed the flowers exactly or modified the arrangement for your painting?
I love your flowers Mick and the single flower is so bonny too. You are such a natural at the still life.
Mick, I’m not much of a flower painter, but do enjoy panting florals when I do paint them. In my humble opinion, and it is so difficult on the internet to see accurately, I would say p’haps to concentrate on more tonal value and different brush strokes within some of the petals, and also work on the background at the same time as painting the flowers…fading out the edges of some of the flowers and letting them run to create a background would give it a looser feel…. Although this is in no way a tight rendition…. and I think you should be proud of these studies.
Rather than thinking ‘oil' or ‘watercolor’ just concentrate on how techniques in each medium will achieve what you want to say. I also find myself when painting flowers, working larger, on dry paper initially standing up to a slightly angled easel helps everything flow. You may have to get your board off the easel quite quickly if you have something happening that is nice and needs to dry flat. Mixing up tones/values of colors ahead of time also helps me when painting flowers…. so that I don’t have to stop half way while everything is drying and mix up more of green etc. One last thing, I find for a looser interpretation …..don’t sketch on the paper first (or maybe just a few lines)…let your rigger and pointed round do the drawing work, and keep a mid size squirrel mop handy to fade out edges.
Peter - You're spot on. They lack that ambiguity that derives from loads of soft edges and it is a major flaw. The picture pretty much follows the actual arrangement of flowers. Sorry I didn't post a photograph.
Caroline - Once again my thanks for your support.
Maggie - What a wonderful, thoughtful response. Your analysis highlights the major weaknesses in these pieces. Edge work, variety of brush strokes and relationship with background all need greater thought and better execution. One problem here is the lack of relationship between different elements in the image.
Thanks for the tips about practice, I'll give them a go.
Post a Comment