Sunday, February 26, 2012

Work in Progress: A Blush of Spring and Summer Wakening

Still in my tulip mode and started a new one. My goal here is to create a light and colorful abstract pattern here behind the tulip, embedded in the overall dark background, hinting the shimmering light through foliage. At this stage the background seems way too "colorful", and I'm trying to control the urge to dull it down too much -- most of the background areas will be very dark upon completion, with hints of colors showing through here and there. You can always dull and darken a passage in watercolor, but it's hard to do the reverse... 


A Blush of Spring,  Watercolor on Arches 140# Rough Paper , 7"h x 5"w, WIP 1

I also did a first pass of base color on some of the pedals, just to remind myself that I want an overall dark blue-green background to contrast with the warm peachy-pink colors in the tulip.

I also did some more work on the rose painting, "Summer Wakening", mostly trying to finish the  underpainting of the blue-green foliage pattern. I'm trying to use a limited palette of Aureolin Yellow, Cobalt Blue, Viridian Green and Permanent Rose here, just to see how much different hues, temperatures and values I can get by mixing these transparent colors. The Cobalt and Viridian also generated interesting granulation effect on paper -- it's a shame that most of them would be covered in the overpainting process...


Summer Wakening,  
Watercolor on Lanaquarelle 140# Cold Press Press Paper , 10"h x 8"w, WIP 3

2 comments:

  1. Mmmm ... LOVE the drops of color in the background of you latest tulip. Arena. And the blues and blue-greens in Summer Awakening are fabulous. I can't wait to see more!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Arena,I love your work and your WIP !!!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for taking time visiting and commenting on my blog! Your feedback and encouragements are things that keep me going with I am feeling down or frustrated... I will try my best to reply to every comment ASAP but sometimes life gets in the way and I am a bit slow in my response. I would like to apologize if that happens...

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