I have spent the past 3 days painting in my studio instead of en plein air, a change mainly because it was raining in the beginning of the week and I fancied painting some spring flowers.....
I was given this posy by mother in law for Mothers day. I liked the natural 'gathered from the garden' feel.
Placed on a shelf just under eye level, a window to the left side, with the light hitting the yellows.
Daffodils are a challenge because of the colour, to get the variety of tones in yellow and the warm and cools of the petals and trumpets. I spent time mixing a range of tones, in cool and warm and mixing a light violet - using Michael Hardings Kings Blue dark, as a complimentary to mute and darken the yellow.
Here is my palette before I began painting...
I think painting from life in the studio is a great help to painting outside as they are both observational but a still life allows more time to mix colours get tones right and the subject not to be constantly changing or be overwhelmed by a big landscape - you choose the size of your still life.
I thought painting a mass of flowers would be harder than painting just one flower, but actually it isn't, painting a bunch you don't have to paint everything that's there just suggesting overall shapes and colours. So have a go it's fun! :-)
So nice to see the spring start in these daffodils. The flower heads are wonderfully depicted and the glass jug lets one see how well you have carried the stems through.
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