May Bouquet

This is another of the paintings I started in the Janet Walsh workshop in May. It was started without drawing. I just started painting in the flowers as I saw them, starting from the top and letting the paint run downward, for the first wash. I did draw in a few of the azaleas after the first wash dried, so that I could paint in the deeper shadows, and I drew the bowl in after the flowers were done. I think I am going to leave the background white on this one.

11x15 on Arches cold press

Tree Peony

In May I took a workshop with Janet Walsh on painting florals as still lifes. In one of the first exercises Janet had us hold a flower in our hands and paint it. I chose this beautiful dark magenta tree peony. Later in the workshop we got to try some liquid acrylics for backgrounds, and I added a yellow green background. I thought it needed a more interesting background, so yesterday I toned down the yellow green with some greens, blues and pinks, and added more leaves.

Rhodies 1 & 2

These two Rhododendron paintings were painted simultaneously - I worked on one while the other dried. Both were started with an underpainting, and then painted negatively without drawing. I like the soft gentleness of the first one, and stopped painting earlier than usual so I wouldn't lose that. I worked on the second one a little more to get some depth into the darker flowers.