Sarah and I picked up some beautiful springy daffodils to paint together and they have been the gift that keeps on giving!I can’t get enough. They are such a challenge to do right. I’m not used to the color palette so I’m slowly learning how to handle bright yellows.
It’s fun painting with friends. Having Sarah by my side for the first two of these paintings it made the experiences more meaningful. We took our time picking the right angles for our paintings and we painted quickly when we got down to it.
Thank you Sarah for painting with me and listening to me sing and cry! I love that we are friends and I love you 🙂
On painting daffodils:
This color palette. Whew! I am not used to it and it’s been throwing me for a loop… Here’s what’s going down.
Trying to find a background color that works with the flowers has been the biggest challenge so far. Everything behind them looks like a steely grey when I’m looking at the flowers but putting that color down just does not resonate. I think I’ve found a happy place on painting number three by intentionally adding in a lot of red. Strange! That’s not what I’m seeing but it looks nice on the canvas so that’s what it needs to be!
I’m also learning a lot about mixing the dark, dull yellows. Yellow likes to lighten whatever you mix it with so I’m having to start nice and dark with my red/blue mixture to get the look I’m going for.
I’m intrigued by the shade of green on the stems and am still working on getting it just right. It seems to be coming out too saturated and then a little too blue. I think I need to continue to work on dulling it down.
There are so many very saturated yellows and oranges and SO many greys. These are fairly simple as far as the colors involved… green and yellow… but putting them down to create a sense of space. Wow. I am at my edge trying to figure it out and I’m thankful for that!
All three of these paintings have been done with a dramatic side light. Perhaps the one tomorrow I will try with less intense lighting and see what happens.
For the sake of satisfying my curiosity, I ended the background in photoshop on my least favorite of these three. I was pretty confident the background was the issue and I’m still not sure… But it’s interesting to see the changes and wonder what works best.
