PETUNIAS IN HANGING BASKET

The flowers were fun to paint in watercolor, but the basket was a bit hard to accomplish. I began putting in the lighter colors of the basket weave, then shaded deeper around the bottom and side edges. I finished by scraping out some highlights with a razor blade for the areas of the basket that I wanted to come forward. For the background, I wet the surface, painted in the lighter shades, then while still wet, I dropped in the darker colors and let them do their own thing. Dropped the flower colors in here and there while background was still wet. Arches 140 lb. watercolor 100% rag content - 12" x 16".

This is a painting of the home of John and Catherine Smith. I did this painting in my early years of begining to paint. This is oil on canvas. I had several first's in this painting. I struggled with the brick, the shingled roof, and the autos in the carport. They requested the painting at a time when their flowers were blooming. I can see several things that I could improve on, but we don't realize that until later when we have honed our skills somewhat.

This painting on canvas measures 24 x 30 inches. I did paint this in a one day workshop. Workshops are a great way for learning. Everyone paints the same subject, but it is amazing how different the results are. We sketched the basic design and laid in our background colors. This consisted of mixing a medium color of gray, which we painted around the vase and the round flower shapes. We painted a thin flat coat of naples yellow for each of the large roses. We then left it to dry a little while we went to lunch. When returning to the project, the paint we had worked with was now tacky on the canvas. We now worked in some different colors to give the gray background some ooooompf. Started painting the soft flowers that were all around the roses. By painting on the slightly tacky base paint, it was easy to soften the edges of the flowers.

Now it was time for the fun part of the detailed roses. The yellow was still slightly tacky and we began to pull the petal shapes out of the yellow, using different shades of pink and allowing some of the yellow to show through. Mixed a dark of ultramarine blue and burnt umber for the vase, with yellow ochre and burnt sienna for the metal trim around the bottom of the vase.