This is one of my latest florals and I have to say that I'm very happy with it for the moment....I say "for the moment" b/c as soon as I paint something better, then I'll look at this painting and think "eh".
Sooo, white flowers...painting white flowers can be tricky. Most people think that you just leave the paper white where the flower petals are...nope. If you really study white flowers closely, you will see that they have a lot of color in them! Soft blues, purples, pinks, even a bit of green. I never leave a white flower white. Here's the first wash:
I actually started in the middles with the yellows and browns. I used Cadmium Pale Yellow and Burnt Sienna. I built those colors up for depth and then I lightly added Violet and a mixture of Payne's Gray and Ceruleo on the petals for shadows.
Once you paint the petals, it might seem that they are dark and won't look like a white flower, but just wait until the background is added....it'll make the flowers pop forward and look white.
You can see in the foliage that I painted Cadmium yellow on almost all of the buds and other parts of the foliage that had sun on them. Cadmium yellow is one of my favorite yellows both as a base color and as a color that I use to warm a subject up, even in portraiture.
For the buds, I wet one bud at a time and I drop in a mixture of Hooker's green and burnt sienna. Alternate buds and wait until a bud is dry before you paint the bud next to it. This is time consuming, but worth it. I warm up the Hooker's Green with a brown so that it's not too green.
I'm starting to layer in the greens behind the flowers....I'm using a mixture of Payne's Grey in places to cool it down a bit. I'm painting around sun spots because at the end, I'll soften the edges of these spots with clean water and a brush.
See how the flowers are popping forward once the background is added?
The first full background wash is added very loosely. I'm examining the photograph for soft subtle background details. I used oxgall mixed with water so that my page wouldn't dry too quickly while I was laying down the wash. I had a bit of a problem keeping the edges of my flowers crisp...even though I was painting carefully, I still had to paint quickly. That's the tricky part.
The background is Hooker's Green, Burnt Sienna, Vandyke Brown, and a bit of Cadmium Yellow.
Background wash number 2....is still not dark enough. I'm working carefully around the edges, adjusting colors and shapes as I go. I think that backgrounds are harder even than heavily detailed foregrounds.
Background wash number 3! Still not dark enough! But you can see how the flowers are getting whiter and whiter with each wash and you can see how the shadows are popping out. I've deepened some of the shadows and I did, somewhere in here, deepen the colors again on the buds....I'm kind of working all over the place at this point. You can see that I still haven't finished the upper left hand corner.
Background wash number 4.....my edges around my flowers are getting a bit jagged, so I need to spend some time softening those out with clean water, a brush and a tissue. I have lightly washed Cadmium Yellow onto the flower centers again and even onto some of the leaves and buds, just to brighten things up and give it that sun-kissed glow.
Here's the final result! At the very end, I take clean water and a brush and I soften edges, soften shadow lines, soften out some details in the background. I DID end up having to correct a few edges with white gouache b/c the background was encroaching onto the petals....oy. But that's alright.
These types of paintings are a LOT of work, but the whole process is a lot of fun, even if it's time consuming. Actually, I'm an impatient painter, so a painting that takes a week is an eternity for me...lol
This will give you perspective:
It's 17x21 and it's for sale! $1200.....if you buy it the entire amount will go to the Little Flower Projects Orphanage in China. Contact me if you're interested....Cady@ArtByCady.com
www.ArtByCady.com
Happy Painting!
