Life Interference and crocuses

Life interfered with continuing work on the skull today, so I decided I would instead start work on the crocus painting.  I'm not as confident in my painting ability/skill as my drawing, but only practice will solve that (so they say anyway).

In a previous post I mentioned that I had taken some pics of the crocuses blooming in my back garden.  I picked the one I liked the best and I think I will try to imitate Brigit O'Connor.  If you've never seen Brigit's work, here's her webpage: www.birgitoconnor.com

She is a watercolour artist, very realistic, including images of landscapes and uber-close-up botanicals (or as I like to call them, "flower genitalia" - because it's really a close-up of the pistils and anthers).

While I may not be confident in my painting skills, I do at least understand the steps required.  I took my chosen pic and did a bunch of computer manipulation.  Because it's so hard to get the camera right up close to the anthers, I had to do a bunch of cropping.  This took longer than you'd expect because I was also looking for good compositional elements.  I tried to follow the "golden rule", while still keeping the image interesting.  Then I sharpened, increased colour intensity and turned it black and white.

I printed off both the colour and black and white images and moved to the studio.  Before I can even think of painting, I have to do a line drawing of the image.  I chose to do this on a piece of sketching paper (if I worked directly on the watercolour paper I run the risk of damaging the paper with multiple erasing and drawing).   I frequently referred to both the black and white and colour references to do this.  The colour image sometimes blurs lines and sometimes sharpens depending on where the colour is and the same with the black and white, so I've found that using both really helps to keep the lines accurate.

When I was drawing the flower, I kept it loose at first with a 2B pencil.  Nice big shapes and free whole-arm motions (I stood over my paper the whole time).  Then I started with the anthers, detailing the various waves and bumps and lines, using the other shapes to keep the relative position of the pieces.  Then I moved to the petals, repeating the same process.  I have a nice pen eraser that really helps to define the lines when they get too thick and messy.  I use the drafting brush to remove any eraser bits so that I don't smudge the picture with my hand.

I still have some detail work on the lines in the petals, but this step is almost complete.  Next I will transfer the line drawing to watercolour paper using my light table (a.k.a. window) keeping my lines faint, but dark enough to see.