Tulip, Marigolds and Petunias

Tulip, Marigolds and Petunias

7" square 

Pan Pastels, Rembrandt and Terry Ludwig pastels

White Art Spectrum Colourfix Suede pastel card

This little painting took three stages to finish, first blocking in the tulip over a bright orange background, then the yellow-orange marigolds and greenery and most of the tulip's form, then the last details came very fast and I added the petunias to balance the composition and unify the colors. Also some little forget me knots between the flowers. 

This garden is overgrown and unreal but I don't care, it looks the way I wanted it to. Or maybe the plants just filled out enough to fill up the spaces between them. I always liked that look in garden plants. It's not weedy though, all garden flowers. I love being able to use the bright colors in a painting and still be true to life. Ruffled petunias and the tulip were both from the Pastel Spotlight challenge this month on "Violet" theme at WetCanvas, photos by BlackHorse and DAK723. The orange marigolds were more or less taken from another painting I did some time back from a photo by DAK723 but I changed their color based on ones I remembered.

This month has been a bit rough for changing weather. Not that bad for pain but I've been sleeping a lot and doing less sketching and painting. Need to get back to sketching and painting so I scheduled myself an extra hour in the garden on Wednesday's clinic visit to be able to settle out there and sketch something from life. I will be packing art supplies, probably water media.

Colourful Rose aka Red Red Rose

Colourful Rose aka Red, Red Rose

6" square

Terry Ludwig pastels on white Colourfix Suede pastel card

Photo reference by DAK723 on WetCanvas

This one is another "Pastel Spotlight" challenge painting. This month's challenge theme is Red. DAK723 hosts the challenges and had already done blue, green, yellow and maybe orange, think orange was one. So I was very glad he put a rose into the lineup.

It was pink, a medium-dark pink like hot pink. And this rose is not quite it. I changed it substantially in the painting, abandoned the reference entirely somewhere around doing the middle of the sketch. In simplifying it I changed the interior petals to my artistic tastes. I made the light stronger and more directional. How that worked ultimately was that it looks more as if it's washed by a dapple of sun and implies a shade tree above the entire scene - an effect I love.

I also succeeded in two things. You can't photo a red rose. I've tried. What comes out is scarlet with black squiggles and no values in between. I've looked hard at some professional photos of red roses and seen the way the dark reds vanish suddenly, even after serious photoshop work. Well, it can be done with a painting! Yay!

And so the color was entirely from memory. I worked out both the rendering for bright scarlet roses and for the deep red velvety ones I always loved. Where the deepest darks really do sometimes go almost to black. I figured out how to do that by way of the underpainting colors, and so there will be more red roses to come as I play with the results.

I don't much like Terry Ludwig on Colourfix Suede as much as Pan Pastels or firmer pastels, but it worked better than plain paper. I would have preferred sanded, but now I know, use firmer pastels. This kind of experiment always helps. I also used an alcohol wash for the underpainting or I probably would have killed the tooth in the first layer.

Plain paper, coated paper, sanded paper of different grits - all pastel surfaces have favorite pastels and all pastel brands have favorite surfaces. The fun is finding out what the combinations do. If I did this again with Pan Pastels and accents in hard pastel or pastel pencil it might come out great - but would still be a very different rose!