More Tulips

Tulips are one of my favorite flowers.  So I will be painting as many as I can, before they are all gone.

Here is my  latest and a bit of a departure for me.

Tulips in a White Jug – A4 – Mixed Media on Bockingford

These tulips are on their way out.  They started off a lovely pinky-red shade and gradually got darker as they started to turn.  I love how the petals of tulips go in all different directions at this stage.  I used oil pastels to make the dots and water soluble crayon for the stamens.  I also scraped some water color pencil in the petals when they were wet.

Here is the reference photo I set up.

I found two lovely scarves with similar colors and used them as a background.  I know they are really busy, but I tried to simplify the design for the painting.  I find painting backgrounds a challenge at the best of times.  I think this would also make a really good acrylic painting too.

Playing With Watercolor Paint

I have been trying something new.  Playing with paint.  I don’t find painting to be a joyful thing.  It doesn’t come to me naturally.  In fact, I am quite serious about it and rather uptight – quite the opposite about how I am in real life.  Funny how that is.  The more I learn, the more tense I get.  I am not sure if I will ever really loosen up.  Maybe it is because I am very much a practical person.  I am great at reading instructions and putting things together.  I learn how to do things very quickly.  I can put together Ikea furniture no problem.  I am great at making, but not so great at creating.  I am too literal when it comes to painting.  I can cook, sew, knit, crochet, mend furniture, decorate, etc, etc.  Wait a minute, I can create meals without a recipe and improvise if necessary. I know the process of how to knit a sweater without a pattern (maths is really handy here and having done a few knitting classes), sometimes I just automatically know what to do when it comes to real life situations.  But coming up with an idea of what to paint and how to paint is a real challenge for me.  I lost the will to live after painting some tulips last weekend.  I tried to make a few sketches  but that just made things worse.  When I painted the tulips, they were right in front of me and I just went for it without too much thought.  Planning is supposed to be the key.  Painting subsequent tulips was a big fail.  I think I got too caught up in planning as I think that is what one is supposed to do as an artist.  For those of you new to this blog, I have been teaching myself to paint in various medium for the last 3-4 years.  I have only been painting with watercolors for the last year.

Today I did a painting exercise.  I put out paints, pencils and other water based medium.  I got out my Analgous Color Wheel and I just put paint on paper.  This is what happened:

In picture 1 I worked on size A4 paper, using red, orange, blue, green, purple.  I used colored pencils and the back of my brush to make marks.  I splattered water and paint.  I was trying to paint an owl jug that I purchased as part of my booty for still life’s and to hold some brushes.  The owl was a fail so I turned it into an abstract.  I used some mount board cut into two L shapes to crop sections.  2,3,and 4 show various croppings.  It is also easy to do on the computer in the photo editor program.

Or, I could just have one big abstract like the one below.  It looks like a landscape with a lake, to me.

Here is another one I made

Original

Original in Landscape Format

Cropped

The one on the left was painted in A3 size using reds, orange, yellow, purple and green. I also used a stamp I found in a charity shop, water soluble crayons, splatter, etc.  The top right is in landscape as I thought it looked better that way and the bottom right is how I will crop it.

And here is my last one.

The one on the left is A3 size painted with greens, oranges, blues, Paynes Grey pencil, back of my brush, etc.  I turned it around to landscape format and thought it looked like a pond.  There was a lot of splashing of paint and water and scraping of pencils.  I also used an oil pastel crayon.

I actually enjoyed doing these!  I looked at my wheel and worked out what colors to use and just put the paint on, made some marks, splashed some paint and water, did a little scraping, combing and that was that!  I have noticed that I am inclined to make lots of curvy marks when letting rip.  I didn’t think too much either, and that helped to free me up a little.  Now I just have to think of what to paint next! 🙂

Its Tulip Season

Here is the first of hopefully many tulip paintings.  I missed out on painting them last year as I was out of the country.

I used Winsor & Newton Paints on Bockingford A3 size.  I haven’t painted anything for a few weeks so this was mostly an exercise.  I drew it out first with a watercolor pencil.  I’m more or less happy with it.  I think it looks better in person.  I really don’t think the computer in cameras or iphones do the colors justice.  Although going large was a nice exercise.  I think I will go back to painting smaller for the moment.