Trilliums 2 ~ complete

Here is my finished painting. Like I mentioned in my previous post, this is a new style for me but I thoroughly enjoyed working this way and will definitely pursue this same style in the future. Looking at the painting now I wish I had spent more time on the white petals. White flowers provide a great opportunity to exercise our ability to observe and see color where our minds say there should be none. White is really a very colorful color!

two tulips I rescued from the lawn mower

Trilliums in Bloom

Love the neat texture. It adds so much interest.

With the plastic wrap in place. 

I saved my whites with liquid fisket.

The woods around these parts are currently carpeted in wild trilliums and it's a glorious sight.  I wanted to pay tribute to this flower that blooms for such a short time, often alongside wild forget-me-nots, with a small painting.

I pulled out a trick I haven't tried in years...saran wrap aka plastic wrap. It's a cool way to add some interesting effects/texture.  Simply cut pieces of the wrap and place on your wet paint. Make sure the paint is really wet or nothing will happen. You can then manipulate the wrap any way you wish. Also don't remove the wrap until the paint is thoroughly dry or all your lovely textures could be lost. By adding the forget-me-nots I was able to try out my new tube of watercolor, Periwinkle by American Journey.

Trillium Trio with WIP

Trillium Trio~5" x 7"

I'm still playing with the trilliums. I also plan to continue experimenting with different palettes. In this painting I added DS Moonglow (just love this color..it mixes with practically everything) to the Phthalo turquoise and perm. yellow left on a previous palette. Moonglow's purple-y/grey served to neutralize the other colors and brought what I consider a slightly old fashioned look to the finished painting. I also used a working drawing and a small amount of misket to save some edges. I'm not particularily happy with the flower on the top left. The angle is too sharp and horizontal and leads the eye off the painting.

This painting was done on #140 HP and I'm still using Kemp's paper prep technique. I like the ability to lift paint on this surface, especially when dealing with white flowers.

Trilliums~Fast and Loose

Last year I took several photos of trilliums for reference but never did a thing with them. Instead I went off on another tangent and the images were forgotten. In 2009 Spring came about 6 weeks late and stayed all summer so trilliums were scarce. This year Spring has arrived very early in N. Michigan. The trilliums aren't blooming yet, though. The poor things probably don't know what's going on!

This is more of a study than a finished painting. I wanted to try Kemp's paper prep technique with HP Fabriano w/c paper. Hotpress paper contains a lot more sizing than coldpress so I was able to achieve more detail and definition but it tended to dry out much faster which presented it's own problems. Lesson learned? HP paper needs to be soaked to maintain the same moisture levels as CP. Just brushing water on both sides of HP won't work. The good news...it all depends on the end result you want which paper will work best using Linda Kemp's prep method.

Just Doodling

It was brought to my attention(thank you, Margaret!)that my first composition was leading the viewer's eye off the left side of the picture. I agreed so I added a few bare twigged bushes in strategic places to bring the focus back into the main comp. I do believe that worked. It never hurts to get a second(or even third)opinion when creating a composition. Sometimes it can be the most obvious flaws that we(I)tend to miss.

I've been trying to come up with a composition for my trilliums without much luck. Who would've thought it would turn into such a chore. They're just trilliums...right? I finally started doodling in an old sketchbook I found(surprising what you find when you go rummaging)and came up with this idea. I really wasn't planning on including so much landscape but I kinda like this concept. As I mentioned in my previous post, the woods are very dry and the trilliums are in short supply this year. In fact, our local weather has been such that my own gardens are at least three weeks behind in terms of growth. A lone clump of trilliums blooming valiantly next to a piece of deadfall in a sea of dry leaves seemed to capture that sense of the promise of Spring to come.