A rich dark (combining Phthalo Blue green shade (PBgs), Quinacridone Red (QR) and a little Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold(QNAG)) was scraped onto the foreground using a folded card, then a brush with just matte medium was dragged around and through it. The paint consistency mattered a lot here – creamy, but not watery, plus colour mixing was challenging (use just a little of the “power” paints like the Phthalo colours). Once this rich dark was placed, a deep rich green was used to “sweep” strokes of color in the reminder of the foreground, immediately dragging a damp brush through the shapes (to soften). Back to the rich plum colour to “card” in the flower stalks and paint in small dark patches where needed in the blossom shapes.
A blue-ish green mixture (lightened with Zinc White) is placed in the background where it joins and shapes the mass of foreground grasses. The objective here was two-fold – first, to “cool” the green colour enough that it would appear to to farther back, and, second, to punch little negative shapes at the upper edge to look like we are seeing through the foreground grasses.
Mixing PBgs, QR and Titanium White, lighter pinks, mauves and plum tones were used to craft the flower forms more. Turning the subject and paper upside down can be helpful here. Some of the plum was used to roughly depict the distant land mass. Taking advantage of darker greens, some dark plum and a folded card (or, in my case a small brush and some swearing), a few sparse stalks were placed in the upper part of the painting.
A new twist this week came with the realization that a few students were using OPEN acrylics – this went a long way to explaining why things were taking so long to dry….
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