Artist Barbara Rosenzweig's Blog: Art, Gardening, Photography, and Ramblings: floral art

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

This tropical flower is absolutely stunning! I love painting all of the wonderful crinkles, textures, neat structures, and shadows of this hibiscus!

For this painting I used the technique called "mingling." To paint the shadows, I used one color after the other, but rinsed the brush before using the next color. This way, I let the new color just touch the preceding one, allowing the color to mingle in lovely and unexpected ways. That's part of the fun of watercolors!

Check out this unique technique for painting the shadows and tell me what you think!

Linked to Watercolors by Barbara Etsy Shop, Watercolors By Barbara Website, Fine Art America, Blue Monday, Alphabe-Thursday, Fall into Fall, and Pink Saturday

Sunday, October 7, 2012

WHITE WATER LILY - New Watercolor Painting

When I think of fabulous flowers, the water lily instantly comes to mind! I've taken hundreds of photos of them over the years, but this is the first time that I have attempted to paint one. I guess that before this time I felt that I needed more experience to try it.

There are a lot of challenges here. Besides figuring out how to paint essentially white petals, giving them a sense of depth and interest, I had to understand how to paint a reflection in water. Even though I liked how the reflection petals looked in the middle painting, there was no sense of movement in the water. To give this sensation, I pulled the color from the water across the flower reflection. Also, I wanted to "push back" the lily pad behind the flower and make the blossom "pop." To create this effect, I darkened and added blues and browns for interest and depth. I hope that I achieved these goals in the final painting.

Below are a few of the stages in the creation of this painting.