Saturday 9 August 2008

WHITE LILIES IN THE GARDEN

These wonderful lilies with the yellow central strip have been blooming in the garden since my brother and his wife spent a week with us followed by a 5 day visit from my daughter and her three girls, so I never had a chance to paint them en plein air. So from a series of photos I took as they came out, I selected three and created this composition. The lefthand side came easily by selecting sections from the three photos and adding background leaves, but didnt know what to do with the righthandside, so simply made up the stems with leaves and a single bud I took from popping back down into the garden when drawing to fill the space!!! Not quite the professional approach really but I think it works.
I used my Winsor and Newton watercolours creating greens from Winsor yellow and Winsor blue and the background had a final wash of permanent alizarin crimson to darken but keep interesting. The shadows on the petals were a weak mixture of these colours. So the painting was created from three primaries.

I had originally planned to paint one of these in my new handmade sketchbook, but I needed more framed floral watercolours to hang in a Norwich city florist with other pieces they have of mine.... but I still might also just do a single bloom in my sketchbook this weekend.

3 comments:

Robert A Vollrath said...

I always love your flowers.

Robyn Sinclair said...

Beautiful, Joan. I agree with Robert.

Serena Lewis said...

I love these lilies, Joan....beautifully painted ~ :)