Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Bleeding Hearts Step #4 Final painting

For the final stage of my Bleeding Hearts watercolour, I deepened the red on the hearts, and added some very light shading to the white parts of the flower along with adding seeds. Then I toned down all the lightest leaves - adding yellow-green where the light was shining on the leaves and adding more violet shades and darker blue-green shades to add variation to the leaves. 

I gave it a rest and took some photos. I noticed some leaves that were advancing too much into the foreground so I toned them down a bit and tidied up some edges - softening others. When I was happy, I signed my name, framed the painting and framed it. 

I entered it into the KWSA member's show in June and I'm thrilled to say the original has sold already!!
I will arrange to have prints that you can order online and those should be available soon.




Saturday, June 06, 2015

Bleeding Hearts Step 3

Step three...

I decided on the placement of the main leaves using the colours of the background so there would be a variation of interesting colour in them. I transferred the leaves onto the paper, and started to darken some of the areas where I want lots of contrast. 

Wetting the paper in sections I dropped in paint to make darker green and green-blue and yellow-green areas around the leaves. I used the background that was already there as a starting point. Using 2 brushes, one to apply the paint and another damp brush to soften edges so I didn’t get hard lines I worked my way around the outside of leaves. I prefer a softer blended look for my watercolours. 

It was quite a fiddly job painting around the little hearts but I want to see all the areas of the painting progress at the same time. I was trying to darken the edges but keep light in the centre to draw your eye to the main object which is the flowers. 

The background hearts are there as background so I purposely make the red bleed into the green and fuzz the edges so they disappear a bit more. This step of negative painting probably took me the longest since I had to put on several layers to get some of the areas dark enough. 

Adjust this… adjust that…make some of the edges softer and some more crisp. I still want to try to keep the colours that I started with since I love this combination. Play time!  

Oh I’m so pleased with how this is going…
Can't wait to show you the finished painting tomorrow!

I hope you can make it to see the KW Society of Artists show if you live close. It's on until June 25th at the Button Factory on Regina Street in Waterloo. 


Friday, June 05, 2015

Bleeding Hearts Step 2

Here is the second step-by-step photo of my "Bleeding Hearts" painting that is entered into the KW Society of Artists show that opens at the Button Factory in Waterloo on Friday from 5 - 7pm.

After the first layer of light pink is on to show the shape and overlap of each heart, now it's time to really brighten up each flower. Using quite a bright red colour I wet each flower and touched the colour to the areas I wanted the strongest colour to be - keeping in mind that I wanted to leave some white areas to show the puffiness - and give each little heart some form and shape. 

With watercolour you can't paint two wet areas side by side or else all the colour bleeds into the wet area next to it. So I had to skip around quite a bit so so I could always be working on a flower that was beside two dry hearts.

You'll notice some hearts in front, some behind and some hanging sideways because they don't all face the same way as they hang from the stem. To show one heart was overlapping another heart, one edge was kept lighter and the one below (usually) is a bit darker - or vice versa - this way you don't have to outline each little flower with a line. The edges are kept crisp and the colour variation separates each one. I kept glazing more colour and more colour on the hearts until they were almost as dark as I wanted them. On bleeding hearts the older little hearts are lighter than the newer ones. I'm not quite done adding the layers of colour to all the hearts.

I'm loving how the hearts are turning out. Now is the time to sketch some leaves from the plant in my garden and figure out placement using tracing paper that you can see the background colours through.

Bleeding Hearts are one of my very favourite spring flowers. What spring flower is your favorite??

Watch for step 3 tomorrow.




Thursday, June 04, 2015

Bleeding Hearts Watercolour KWSA show

This painting is called  "Bleeding Hearts" it's 11x14". For a few days I'm going to be sharing step-by-step photos so you will see my watercolour as it progressed. 


It's entered into the KW Society of Artists show that opens at the Button Factory in Waterloo on Friday from 5 to 7 pm.

The first step is to draw out your design onto watercolour paper. I used a combination of photos and also drawn from life using my own plant in my garden as reference material. When you are pleased with the design, you paint over all the little hearts and stems with masking fluid (thin latex) to save the white. 

When that's dry you wet the paper on both sides and drop multi colours into the water and watch the colour do its thing. It's magic! Watercolour dries much lighter than what it looks like when it's wet so you never really know what you're going to get until it's totally dry!

After it's dry you can remove the masking and you can start to put some pale colour on the hearts to define the shape of each one.

I'll share the next step tomorrow. I LOVE the colours in the background. I hope to keep some of that bright green to show the dappled light falling on the leaves. What do you think? 
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