I grow flowers in my garden and sometimes I wish to preserve their beauty by painting them. This year I planted these amazingly beautiful gladiolus that I really wanted to paint but had no idea how to approach such a complex flower. After watching this class I got the courage to try.

 

First, I photographed the flower in a good light, as I knew I will not be able work fast enough before the flower fades. When I traced the outline of the flower on watercolour paper.

 

When I tested my colours on paper to find the right combination. I went for primary magenta and primary yellow from acrylic inks and opera rose from watercolours. I been painting with acrylic ink and watercolours on separate projects, but it never occurred to me to mix the two in the same project... :D

 

 

Starting was one of the more scary parts. I soon realised that making brush strokes that would represent ripples on petals was much harder when I thought. The lines would not go where I wanted them to go and they felt chunky and clumsy. I finally switched from my smallest brush to the brush that has the finest tip and things got sightly better. Definetly gets better with practice.

Here is a work half way

 

Going over petals with watercolour was very satisfying as it gave a beautiful definition where petals end and a beautiful soft gradient. I tried to mix more yellow for petals closer and kept the colour sightly colder for petals further away.

Glazing with yellow ink at the end was definitely really scary part. I felt more of less finished with painting that took me hours. But it made the image so much more interesting and I had a hart time stopping adding yellow everywhere.

 

Here is speed video of my painting process: