SFP visitors welcome!

Just in case any SFP members have read the newsletter this month and the piece about blogs, etc. that I wrote....welcome!

This is my blog.  Or these are my blogs as I thought I would have two, one for day to day messages and one for sharing techniques.

Both are navigated with the help of the blog archive which you will find in the right hand column if you scroll down.  Click on a month and you will find the stuff I uploaded that month.  Enjoy!

Painting shadows on white flowers

This is a sort of continuation of my narcissi demo uploaded in January 2012.  ( Look in the blog archive...scroll down and it's in the right hand side column.)

This is how to paint the white narcissi flowers.

I had left the flowers unpainted leaving the pristine white paper to represent the white of the daffodil trumpets.  But because flowers were backlit by the sun, there were some interesting cast shadows on the petals.

There are actually two types of shadow.

- The soft shadows showing the form of the petals and how they are creased and bumpy and have frilly edges to the petals.

and

-The harder edged shadows created by the one petal or stalk casting shadow shapes on to another.

They require different treatment.

I first mixed a shadow colour using cobalt blue mixed with quite a lot of water but. plenty of pigment too.  To this I added a touch of permanent rose (or you could use a touch of any pinky red).  Put the pink next to the cobalt blue and gradually mingle it in until you get a soft bluey grey.  You can add a touch of yellow to make it a bit greyer, but it needs to be a pretty grey not a dirty grey!

For the soft shadows
First wet the petal with clean water.  Then stroke a thick mix of the shadow colour into the petal and allow it to blend softly.  This creates the lines of shadow showing the creases within the petals.  If your mix is thick enough it will not spread too much but will stay as a soft shape.
Do the same for the edges of the petals referring to the photo and copying the shape making sure to leave a thin strip of white right at the edge.

For the hard edged cast shadows
Using a slightly darker mix of the shadow colour (add a touch more blue) paint the shadow shapes on wet on dry.  Do not blend them out but leave hard edged as this will give the impression of shapes being cast on the petal.

Your painting will look sunny only if you are brave enough to make the shadows nice and dark.  There has to be a lot of contrast for it to work!

Here's another example of soft and hard edged shadows within white petals.

Hellebores by Ann Mortimer

Incidentally the above painting will be appearing in the January Leisure Painter magazine as part of an article I have written about mixing darks and greens and painting white flowers.  Look out for it!

(Click on any of the photos to enlarge.)

Retford Art Society demo and the wonders of technology

As a result of the wonders of technology and social media I can "talk" to the nice woman (don't know her name) who asked the intelligent question about painting leaves that seem to overlap one another using negative painting.  Hello there, hope you enjoyed the demo!... I directed her to this blog and the demo last January about painting clematis leaves.  She needs to scroll down past the demo of daffodil leaves to the first demo on the blog.  I hope she has a look and finds it helpful.

Above is a painting I did years ago showing leaves bottom left painted this way.

New techniques posts coming soon!

Don't know whether you've all given up on hearing any more from me.  I hope not.  Well I've finished my teaching for the year apart from a demo I am doing for Retford art society tomorrow evening.

 And so I will have time again to post some tips on this blog.  I will start with painting shadows on white flowers.  A very nice person left a comment for me asking me to talk about how to paint the narcissi flowers from the demo on negative painting last January.  I said I would when I found the time.

These are the sorts of shadows I mean in the pic below.

And here's another example of similar shadows.  They're created when the flowers are backlit.

I'll cover the colours we need and the mixing and how to apply the shadows in the next few days, so keep a look out!

By the way the backlit orchids above are from my new book "Ready to Paint Orchids in Watercolour" published by Search Press and available from Amazon in January 2013.

Making tone work for you in a painting (continued)

Continuing with the clematis painting.

Clematis painting with cast shadows added on the flowers

The next task was to put in the shadows cast by one flower over another.  This was important as the cast shadows and effect of sunshine were going to provide part of the "wow" factor of the painting.  But it was not necessarily a straightforward thing to do.  Why?  Because it would involve a decision about tones, of course!  The cast shadows had to be the right tone to make them look like shadow or a lack of light.  So they had to be not as light as the flowers but not as dark as the background and they had to look as though they were translucent as there is a lot of light within shadows!
The way to do this is to really look at the subject and to compare one tone against another.  Also the paint used to depict the shadows has to be quite watery in order that the petals' colour can still be visible through the shadows.

The final stage of the painting would resolve the tonality of the whole.  The background needed to be added so that it was a darker tone than the cast shadows and thus would make the top flower look bright and sunlit.

Final stage of Clematis painting with background added.

I made the background darkest right next to the top flower's petals and then allowed it to become lighter nearer the edge of the painting.  That way there was the maximum chance that the top flower would look sunny and would attract the eye as the focal point of the finished painting.

Once I had put the background in, I found that I had to adjust the tones within the leaf area, making the dark areas between the leaves and under the flowers even darker in places.  My dark mixes came in very handy here.

Making tone work for you in a painting (continued)

Continuing with the clematis painting...

Here I have laid in the first wash wet in wet.  At this stage it's just a case of dropping colours wet in wet in the right areas.  I've dabbed off with a tissue some of the colour from the petals in order to preserve the light.  I've already dropped in some quite dark colours away from the flowers to begin creating a sense of depth.

Now it was time to add some darker tones to the left hand side of the painting which depicts a tangle of stalks and leaves.  Some of the stalks have been masked out and I have painted negatively around others.  I dropped in colours in quite an intuitive way ( that's another way of saying I hadn't a clue what I was doing!)

using pinks, greens and the dark mix in the palette to give an impression of more flowers and leaves in the background.  I've left some leaves unpainted to make one or two stand out.  I'll be brining more leaves out with negative painting later.  You see that the flowers are starting to emerge from the background.

Here I've started painting the flowers, bringing one petal out against another and leaving plenty of areas white  because these flowers are sunlit and the colour will be bleached out in the lightest areas.  Already at this stage the painting has a good variety of different tones from white to dark green/blue.

Making tonal contrasts work in a painting (continued)

Before we go any further, here's the finished painting so you can see where this is leading to.

Clematis catching the sun.

Here's my palette after mixing up some paints.  I have two pinks, (permanent rose and cobalt violet), two yellows (aureolin and raw sienna) a loosely mingled green mix of Winsor blue, quinacridone gold and aureolin and on the enamel plate you can see my dark mix.  This is Winsor blue, Q. gold and then some Winsor violet and some burnt sienna.  The colours are laid side by side and allowed to mingle a little so you can see their potential for use in the dark crevices between the very bright flowers and leaves.

That's how I'm going to achieve the tonal contrast and I really need these dark colours available from the start.

I then put a loose mix of alizarin crimson, burnt sienna and a touch of W. violet in the empty section of the palette (not visible here.) for the stamens and dark areas in the flowers.  So from the start the tones were an important indicator to inform my colour mixes.

My palette with colours mixed ready

Going to do some painting now but next time I'll show you the next stage which, after masking out the centres, will be laying in the first wash wet in wet.