Friday Finish: Spring Flowers

After my latest experience in watercolor painting that yielded (to me) disappointing results, I decided to sign up for a tutorial. I reasoned that it would give me some pointers on realistic shadows and rebuild my confidence in painting.

Shari Blaukopf has a new course that teaches painting spring flowers. This will be my fourth or fifth tutorial with Shari, so I knew what to expect.

https://learn.shariblaukopf.com/

The first lesson is crocuses. Shari chose a perspective that it dramatic and not hard to do. Her reference photo was taken looking straight down at a group of flowers just opening up.

I jumped right into the lesson, sketching it yesterday and painting it today.

Maybe I could have made my cast shadows darker.

This exercise was fun and relaxing. The palette I used incuded cobalt blue, quinacridone magenta, hansa yellow deep, transparent orange, carbazole violet, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and yellow ochre. Paper is Arches cold press, 140 weight.

After I finish the next two lessons, I’ll go back and try painting my Admirable Weeds subject again.