Torrance
Poppy – PV
The first thing I want to do is create a soft diffused background. These types of backgrounds can come in handy for a lot of different kinds of paintings: Landscapes, still life, portrait…Anywhere you need a soft background to compliment your subject.
I used my #12 bristle brush, my gesso and all the colors of my palette except burnt sienna, I didn't need it for this painting. Using a lot of gesso and touches of different colors, I scumbled the colors together (scumbling is a term for the brush going every which way). I was careful not to mix them too well or I would get mud. Have a good time with this step, the only way you can go wrong is too much mixing of color will create muddy colors, just use gesso to gently blend between the different colors so they are soft and diffused.
When I had my colors down, I took my blending brush and very lightly – "three hairs and some air" as the late Bob Ross would say – and softened the colors even more so I didn't have any hard lines or transitions. Then it has to dry.
I want to get this point across so you understand how this part of composition works: Just because a photo may have the subject small and in the middle, doesn't mean that you as an artist have to paint it that way, if you want your painting to be interesting, you need to make your subject bigger on your canvas, simplify the scene and keep the bulk of your subject out of the center. There are always exceptions to the rules, but first you need to learn them so you know when you can break them.
I had my reference photo in front of me so I could see the shapes of my flower then took my soft vine charcoal and sketched in my flower over my background. My flower take up almost 2/3s of the canvas and it even goes off the page in a couple of places. One thing I did keep in mind when sketching this is if it was going to go into a frame I have to watch my design. A frame will cut off about ¼ + or – of your picture so you want to keep the ends of things at least a ½" from the edge or make sure that it looks like you purposely went off the page as I did. Otherwise, it can look like the subject is stuck to the edge of the frame visually and can distract from your painting.
I also didn't put in all the leaves, only a few because they weren't the subject but were supportive of the flower.
When my sketch was done, I blew off the chalk dust before I began and I switched to my #8 bright (it is a flat brush with shorter bristles). I mixed my gesso with touches of blue and purple but kept it in the soft lavender shade, this is what I use in all my areas that were sunlit.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Your strokes should follow the direction of growth when you are doing flowers and the strokes should follow the shapes of the petals or flower parts. What this means is that all petals, stamens and pestles go back to a central point where they meet the stem but the petals (stamens, pestles) themselves have shapes such as angles, folds or wrinkles or dips and curves so just like when we were making the snow, we have to be aware that while our strokes need to go towards the stem, they also need to go over bumps, down curves, stop at wrinkles or folds…It is not as hard as it sounds, just takes a lot of words to convey a simple idea. Go out and look at flowers and pay attention to the shapes that make the petals have dimension.
The first thing I painted was the yellow center of the flower. I used yellow with a tiny touch of purple – its compliment – and using the end edge of the brush, pulled a fuzzy edge down towards the center. The stamens and pestles radiate out from the center so any stroke that isn't in the center needs to angle in to create that rounded look. While it was still a bit wet, I took straight yellow and did the same kind of stroke but kept that color near the top of the center. Then I started painting the petals starting with the sunlit areas first.
One of the things I tried to do with flower is to leave some of the background color showing through so I used a dry brush technique: a little paint on the brush and I didn't press down very hard. You should see the under painting through the paint you apply. I also just used this color mix only in the sunlit areas. Flowers are translucent – light shines through them – but we still need some dark to show light.
For the shadow areas I used the same colors – white (gesso), blue and purple – but this time less white more blue and purple. Be careful not to go too dark, it just needs to be a shade or two darker than the color you just used and I actually just mix in the same pile of paint, I just make it a bit darker. This is what I used in the shadow areas again following the shapes of the petals and using a dry brush so some of the under painting color showed through.
When you start the detail have your reference photo in front of you, it does you no good if it is in your bag or under something, this is your guide, your road map. Have it, use it.
I switched to my #6 flat sable brush for the highlighting of my flower. A sable brush gives a smother stroke, and I want that at this point. I used gesso to start the highlighting and switched to titanium for my final highlight. First, I used my gesso with a tiny touch of yellow to slightly tint it. Starting at the edge of my flower in the sunlit area and using the end of my brush I highlighted the edges by putting the paint on a bit heavier on the edges and dry brushing as I moved away from the edge, still following the shape of the petal I am painting. My final highlights were just the titanium white and only along the edges in the brightest parts of the petals.
In the shadows, I used a mix of gesso with just a touch of blue using a combination of streaking the color forming ridges in the shadows and dry brushing the color to soften the darker shadow. You are going to have to play around with this and finish it in a way that satisfies you. It will take time and experience for this to make sense, so the more you practice, the sooner you will understand.
Final touches: The leaves and stems I under painted using sap green and a touch of blue to give me a dark color. Just like the petals my strokes followed the way the leaves grow. To highlight the leaves, I used sap green and yellow, for the veins I added a bit more yellow and used my liner brush.
Next week we will do some water, a value scale and go over brush strokes so have a blank canvas either new or one you gesso over, this will be practice not a project. See you soon.
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