Dancing Tulip (Finished, Finally!)

I am very happy with the end results of this painting -- I think the dark, colorful backgrounds painted wet-in-wet added the drama to the painting, and the value on the flower pedals, although on the darker side, still appear luminous against the background. I toned down the yellow-green foliage to make the light on the pedals shine and catch maximum attention, and I think it worked!

One thing I learned when painting this little study is how to use natural stopping points as boundaries for wet application, and only wet part of the background area at a time during paint application. Any light shape, such as the green area to the right of the left bud, can be such a stopping point. I painted the left side of it first, using the edge of the long leaf at the bottom left corner as another stopping point when wetting the paper. When this dried, I simply re-wet over the green area and the adjacent areas on the right, and floated in more colors to create a seamless connection. The trick of not forming a hard line is to start and stop at an area with relatively thin pigment density, so that pigments already on the paper would not lift and form a dark line along the edge of the wet area.

Dancing Tulip,  

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 7"w, 2012 #21 

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