Morning glories and Fuschias

 

         Here, I have started on the foreground flowers on the left hand side of the painting and the colors that I used are:

         Schminke’s  magenta, ruby red, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, indian yellow, aureolin yellow, sap green and Lukas burnt sienna. 

         These morning glories are of a beautiful sky blue, sunlit, which I changed into purple in the painting. In this first step, I wet the entire flower area (except where the petals overlap and form a hard edge like in the bottom most left flower) and starting at the outer edge, dropped in magenta of medium consistency, taking care that that the wash doesn’t flow into the white centres. As it was just starting to dry, I lifted out the color with a slightly damp stiff brush for the whitish veins. I laid in a first wash of sap green mixed with a little indian yellow for the sunlit leaves.

 

                   Here, I have started adding shadow areas with two mixes of magenta and ultramarine blue, one tending towards the magenta and the other darker mix favouring the UB. Some of the white veins have a dark violet border.

 

                The mask is still there on the fuschia buds and stems and I wet the area behind them and dropped in the same mixes so that they look like far off buds. The leaves that are bluish because they are facing upwards, I put in a wash of aureolin yellow and UB.

 

                      In this step, I washed over the entire flower with a mix favouring the UB, and added some shadows and veins as they were drying.

 

                Magenta is non staining, and so it was easy to lift off the color for the veins for each layer but at the same time, layering was difficult as the previous layers tended to lift as soon as water was applied. These shadows I applied wet on dry, trying to soften the edges some times. The centres are aureolin yellow with a bit of indian yellow at the edges to give depth. Lifted off a whitish line in the middle for the stamen. For the flowers which are in shadow, I used raw sienna for the centres. For the buds, I wet the area slightly, dropped in aureolin yellow at the base, (or sometimes sap green for the smaller buds) and diluted magenta at the top. As it was drying, I stroked in diagonal lines of a little darker violet. ( 0 number brush). The stems are sap green, but some are purple too. The shadow on the lower leaf is a mix of aureolin yellow, UB and a little violet. 

 

                 A mini catastrophe here, I removed the masking and it wouldn’t come off. The upper layer of the paper got torn and I don’t think I will paint all of the birds as the details would not show at all on the ripped paper. I will merge some of them in the background. Here, I worked on the fuschias. I did them in only one wash as they are very small. The buds are quite translucent and I wet the area, and dropped in the magenta and the UB, sap green at the base and top, marking the veins with darker colors as they were starting to dry. Same with the flowers, wet each petal separately, dropped in the reddish mix on one side and the bluish mix on the other side of the petal. I also used a bit of ruby red. 

 

                 Started on the area behind the flowers here, using aureolin yellow mixed with a bit of UB. At the bottom, I painted in burnt sienna, adding vertical strokes of a darker brown (adding a bit of violet to it) so that it looks like the morning glories are creeping over a tree.  

                  

                    Darker mixes towards the bottom (violet mixed with sap green)