HIBISCUS ON LANA VANGUARD

I have now finished my second floral watercolour on Lana Vanguard surface of two hibiscus blooms. I photographed these in a garden in Port Elizabeth when I was visiting friends who have a second home there and they took me on a wonderful sketching tour of South Africa back in 2007. I had bluebird hibiscus in my garden at Cherry trees with many a photograph of the glorious blooms in my archives, but I wanted a contrast with the blue of the iris I have already painted in this trio.


Here is photo of early stages of the painting:







Thought you'd like to see an early closeup as well, so you can see the wonderful effect this slippery surface has on the many watercolour washes:








Finally, here is the completed work 12" x 16" to go in a 16" x 20" frame with nice wide ivory mount:





Now to number three - possibly the South African trip is inspiring me because I'm thinking of creating a very large strelizia from a watercolour I painted in my Saunders Waterford HP pad
in the garden in Port Elizabeth:








Here I am working on some kafferboom we picked from a tree just outside the bungalow where I was staying. When I painting the strelizia I picked one bloom but kept dashing back to the front garden to see how the leaves grew:




Ah! memories!