Friday 28 December 2012

Hydrangea in Pot

                                            Acrylic on board 6" x 6"

Yay! I managed to squeeze in one more painting by year's end.  I was very pleased with the results of today's painting, although not so much with the photo of it.  Couldn't seem to get a lovely crisp reproduction because I still haven't learnt to use my camera properly!

I could hear Greg Baker's voice (see blog for 27th Nov) in my head today while painting, which was a good thing.  It helped me do better with the tone.  I also put more effort in on the foundations before starting on the detail.

I was also quite pleased at the composition of the painting which I cobbled together from a photo I had taken a week or two ago.  Mostly when I've painted from photos I get bogged down in trying to faithfully reproduce them - colours and all.  Not that I ever succeed of course but it doesn't stop me trying.

This is the same hydrangea that I used for reference last time but it had changed colour somewhat since I took the first round of photo reference shots.  When I bought it, it was an elegant creamy colour with purple highlights.  I didn't realise that it was just in its adolescence and it soon matured into a lovely vibrant purpley, blue colour.




2 comments:

  1. Hi Wendy,
    I just added a comment for you on my own blog, in answer to your comment, but I'm not sure if you get that by email so I wanted to post here too.
    I like this hydrangea painting, and also the hydrangea you did earlier and the macaw.
    I wanted to comment that you might want to try more oils. I gather from your blog that you work in acrylics and recently tried oils at a workshop. I think oils are MUCH easier than acrylics! More forgiving, easier to correct mistakes, mostly because they dry more slowly. But the most important thing in developing as an artist, I think, is to get loads of information, try different things, then do whatever works FOR YOU, regardless of anyone else's opinion.
    Happy painting!
    Julia

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  2. Thank you for your comments Julia, I agree that oils are lovely to work with. When I first began painting 20 odd years ago, I was using oils and loved them.
    Unfortunately, over the years I've become extremely neurotic about chemicals and when I began to paint again, I decided to try a medium that I could wash out in water.
    But who knows, maybe I will find I can revisit them again down the track.
    Happy painting - and writing!!
    Wendy

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