Day 74 - Flowers

The set up

I am taking a class with Charles Reid in about a month and I decided I needed to practice painting flowers/still lives.  I think flowers are SO hard to paint...I don't know why. I would rather paint just about anything than flowers!

I have alot of fiestaware for my everyday dishes so I decided to use them in the piece.  It's painted on Kilimanjaro Cold Press and is a half sheet in size 15x20".

I like Kilimanjaro because its tough. You can lift color off if you don't like it.  I have even washed a whole sheet of it under the faucet. ReALLy!! I have scrubbed it with a scrubby and sanded it with sand paper. TOUGH paper!!

The Start

B pencil on Kilimanjaro

A start

So far so good!!

I started painting at the top of the flowers and began working my way down.

Thought you might like to see where I paint...here it is as a WIP on the easel.

I liked everything about it at this point BUT the flowers. I DONT know why but they just drive me C R A Z Y!!!

I changed the colors of the striped fabric because I didn't think it went with my color scheme.

I decided to darken the background because the flowers were just getting lost in the cerulean and yellow ochre background...wonder if it was because the yellow ochre was really close in value to the yellow of the daisies??

I also added more pink to alot of the flowers...quinacridone magenta and I thinked that helped too.

These are the parts I really like...I LOVE the way the teapot turned out!

I also really like the apple and lime! And the two fiestaware plates.