Paint Bright Flowers… Be Happy!
Dear Friends & Fellow Painters,
Summer arrives this weekend and I am so excited to change my palette to match this happy season.
(Jody at the new Four Season’s Hotel in Seattle last Monday)
Tuesday, I worked on finishing the sheep.
We left off last week with the base colors in place. When I reviewed them on Tuesday morning, they were too dull…So, I overlaid the tan of the sheep with yellow-gold to give them more contrast from the background.
That’s one of the good things about watercolor. If you paint light enough the paper will accept a second or even third wash.
After I have finished the larger body and shapes of the picture, I then add the details. I use a small liner brush with gouche and corresponding watercolor palette to create the fine highlights and fur details.
Viola! The finished results titled “Experience New Heights”.
Today, I started a new painting and I am going to introduce you to a new technique. In some compositions you need to paint the shadows first. This is especially true with yellow. if you try to put shadows on top of the yellow they always go to green. If you look carefully at the picture below, the blue-grays are virtually disapearing underneath the strong cadmium yellow.
If I hadn’t pointed out the shadows, you might have never even noticed them.
But the shadows are what give the composition depth. The yellows would be completely flat without this trick.
To follow my own advice about repetition and variation… I placed a pale yellow to pink wash in both the butterfly wing and the flower symbol beneath it.
After all the brown of the last two months it was a breath of fresh air to change to these happy summer colors!
On to Audra’s lesson…
Audra too wanted to paint flowers for summer and chose this photograph of her neighbor’s kitty in a basket.
She took great care to create this stylized drawing complete with flowers.
She painted the lightest washes first and her she is gently blowing on wet wash to mix the colors. We will complete her lesson in a future blog.
(Jody at the public market in Kona, Hawaii)
Enjoy your Memorial weekend and don’t forget to go to the flower market and get some colorful flowers for inspiration! Happy painting!
Love, Jody
Just purchased “Eagle, Air’ East” at at Goodwill store in Lakewood CO. Took it out of the frame and found information about you, and now am on your website. Thanks for creating the print, we will hang it proudly in our home..now we have a story to go with it. Have a Memorial Day to remember. Hank and Virginia Abbott
Virginia said this on May 29, 2009 at 11:07 am |
Virginia,
I’m so glad you were able to save the sacred eagle from an untimely demise! If you look online this is actually only one of a series.
The other three images are “Bear, Water, West”, “Fire, South”, and “White Buffalo”. -Jody
jodybergsma said this on May 29, 2009 at 3:14 pm |