Red Flowering Maple - Pastel

Red Flowering Maple

8" x 10"

Pastel on brown Canson Mi-Tientes smooth side

I started this with a sketch yesterday from a photo I took Wednesday in the Memory Garden at San Francisco General Hospital. I've looked at that tall plant, almost a tree height, for three years now. The flowers are a darker red than I painted because I didn't have the right values to do that, so I altered it and came as close to the value and hues as I could. 

Still, I like how this came out and do know plants vary in the color of their flowers. The sun was hitting the shiny outer surface of the petals in some interesting ways and the greenery was very rich. I had fun with it and have some other photos from this and many visits to work from in future.

There weren't many large flowers with distinct petal shapes in bloom, more daisylike ones and very small flowers on Wednesday. It varies what's in the garden as they remove some plantings and put in new ones depending on what's in bloom, constantly keeping it fresh. Some little orange violas were bright and cheery, I also got photos of bright violet foxglove-looking flowers on a spike head. I might do those another time, but I may have to get out my Unisons to get all the purple hues and values in them.

I enjoyed doing this one, and it'll occupy the black mat that I cut with an 8" x 10" opening instead of 7" x 10" for the Bluebird painting. I'd forgotten I changed the proportions on the Bluebird, so cut one extra mat - now happily destined for a good use! The strong colors will shine against black, I love how that looks.