Tuesday 26 March 2013

Salvia in a meadow - latest painting

I meant to do this post the other day but got caught up in my blood pressure shenanigans so it got put to one side.

I've decided to concentrate on a short series of flower paintings where the background/foreground/both is out of focus.  I did one of these earlier in March (you can see it in this post), and I thought it was extremely effective so spent some time wandering around on Flickr looking for suitable candidates for the next painting.  I found several that I've favourited to make final choices from.

Anyway, I found a rather nice photo of a close up of Salvia in bloom, taken at a botanical garden in Scotland.  I can't post a close up of the photo due to fiddly technical issues but here are some pictures of my painting as I was working on it (I printed off the photo on two different printers, you can see the colour differences.  My painting is a combination of the two.  Don't forget you can click on the pictures to embiggen them):

Salvia - work in progress & finished (20 March 2012)

Salvia - work in progress & finished (20 March 2012)

Salvia - work in progress & finished (20 March 2012)

Salvia - work in progress & finished (20 March 2012)

and finally with the masking tape taken off (I've since touched up the edges):

Untitled

It's turned out really well, and I love the colours.  I'm so loving this technique and it's really effective.

And, yes, I've started on another one!  This one is of a white star-shaped flower against a much darker green and near-black background.  It's only in its early stages so far and there are many more layers of subtle colours to be added and blended in yet.  It's interesting because even though the flower is the focal point of the painting, it only takes a fraction of the time to paint compared to the background.  I can easily spend 2 or 3 hours fiddling around with the background, and 20 minutes on the flower!

Current work in progress

Again, I started this latest painting before the fannying around with the blood pressure but I'm hoping to complete it over Easter - I'll show you when it's done.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really lovely - well done.

Aisling said...

New to your blog (came via link on ravelry re bp and fasting) - but these are beautiful paintings!

Mrs Jones said...

Thank you, Ros and Aisling, for your very kind comments!!