Cardoons and Nasturtiums paint-along, July 19th 2020

Hello painters,

Today, we carried on from last week’s wet in wet flowers, but started with a bit of review of wet-in-wet skies and backgrounds.

Wet-in-wet Sky lesson

we began with a quick loose sky with French ultramarine and burnt sienna, and set it aside to dry.

Then we painted with water around a loose sketch of daisies and dropped colour into the water to let it run and merge create a soft sort of out of focus background for the  white daisies.

Unfinished daisies, just the wet in wet background with fingernail flicks to make grasses and texture

Setting those aside to dry, we looked at some gloriously orange nasturtiums:

Nasturtiums, no drawing, just blobby wet brushstrokes, and a bit of splatter…

and finally, CARDOONS! (Which I thought we’re cardooms, oops.)

Cardoons against the sky

Our skies are dry now, and make a great background for the spiky cardoons.

Fran had posted this

Fran’s Cardoon, our inspiration.

The main teaching point here was to use the tail end of your brush to  make the spiky tiny marks at the top of the cardoon flower.

Spiky top made by pulling the wet paint up with the tail end of your brush.

And unfortunately we ran out of time for the daisies. Next week we will complete those and talk about composition, placing them into a larger context. This  sort of thing:

Sunflowers in a composition with a BIG change in scale .

HOMEWORK:

Open your eyes and be curious.

Choose a flower that you love.  Draw it carefully once, really looking carefully and slowly, really learning it.

Then put the drawing aside, and  jump in with a clean sheet of paper and your watercolours  and try to paint it fresh and loose with no drawing!

Here are a few of the flower photos we’ve been working with, but feel free to use your own, and hope to see you next week!

Happy painting and see you next week!

Seana