New Floral on White Ampersand Pastel board

Being the glutton for punishment that I am I had to try another floral layout. AND because my family is loaded with gardeners and thus great floral photo ops I have tons of flowers to paint. This one is my Mom's tulip.

The top photo is my reference. I altered it in in Photoshop Elements by making a more pleasing background. Elements is a great way to find out what colors would work with my flower. I also deepened the red of the petal in the rear so the pink and yellow petal in the foreground would pop.

In the second photo you can see my background which I basically just scribbled in with WC pencils and then wet with clear water. I really liked the effect I achieved with these pencils. The secret of doing a background this way is to wet the lightest areas first and then the dark and let the darks bleed into the light. While it is still wet you can drag the darks into the lights and let them bleed a bit too. This gives some lovely soft edges and a feathery look to the background.

Once again I wanted a watercolor wash on the flower so I would not have so much white to cover up in the flower itself. What you can't see is that I outlined the red area with red CP before I wet the background WC pencil. I did it to keep the dark colors from running into those lighter areas. When the background was dry I added in the red. I followed the same steps in the pink area.

The CP worked fairly well as a resist to keep the water where I wanted it except where I got a little sloppy. I have to learn to let watercolor dry before painting a different color next to it. CP has me spoiled. No waiting for it to dry and it doesn't bleed into other areas if I goof.

You can see the CP I have laid down in the red areas. I used a lot of black cherry to create the shadows. It does not show well here. I am finding I really like to put in a layer of CP then smooth it with a brush into all the nooks and crannies of the Amapersand. By doing this the next layers of color go on smoother and blend better as the rest of layers are all laid down.

In the last photo the dark red area is done. I committed a big no no according to some CP artists and used neon red and pink in those areas where I want the light to appear to be shining through the petals. I really like the way it looks. The color really pops!

I laid the photo reference out yesterday afternoon but I didn't lay out the painting until late this morning. I had errands to run and really only spent about 3 hours working on this painting today. Very quick work for CP!