Days of Variety

Finding variety in art subjects and application certainly stretches the mind and ability and this week I have been determined to venture outside of my norm to push myself into trying something new. I have achieved this with these three works. 

Daisy Attraction

This painting was as close as I got to en plein air painting this week. These daisies grow profusely all along the edge of the river in front of our house and I also have a small patch in the back garden. I took one daiy inside with a piece of its leaf and composed this into a painting. When I started to paint I popped outside a few times to get the feel of the ground cover plant in the sunshine. I decided to add a butterfly to vary my usual floral work.

My second watercolour was composed by using a reference photo of a blue wren and by bringing in a couple of thin twigs off the gum tree on the verge. I pencil sketched the bird then painted the background first and washed it out down the sink a bit to give the faded distance look and then added the twigs and the wren. We are lucky enough to have daily visits from a little family of these sweet birds in our back garden.

Chubby Cheeky Fellow

Good as Gold

My last variety of work came in the form of this glowing sunflower. I spotted this photo on a site called Paint My Photo where photographers are happy to share their work for artists to use and Jess had only just uploaded this glorious photo. I knew immediately that this would suit watercolour on Yupo and I had been wanting for sometime to try and do an entire piece of only one floral bloom but lacked confidence on watercolour paper. As this was really experimental using Yupo for only the third time I had nothing to lose but let go and try.