crocus

Crocus – A Flower I Have Never Seen

I am not inclined to enjoy painting classes online unless they are done in chunks of short amounts of time. Shari Blaukopf’s most recent class, Sketching Spring Flowers, is one such class. In fact, all her classes are very much like this. Her style of teaching and painting are very fresh and direct, and up front, I think she is one of the most talented and unique watercolorists of our time.

So, taking the first section of the class, we are doing a small batch of purple crocuses blooming in her garden, bright colors after a long, cold Montreal winter. Well, I have lived in cold places, have seen tulips and hyacinths emerge from the snow, but never have I seen a crocus. One day! Anyway, this is the first of her flower studies. I can only hope someone else can tell what it is supposed to be.

My own painting is a bit muddy-looking as far as I am concerned. My paints were not as fresh as hers, but that is not the point. It is more about learning technique. It is hard to paint something from a photograph, and hard, too, to paint something completely alien. However, technique and color mixing are the point. For instance, thick wet paint. Let water do the work in the lighter areas. The experience is the point – but my problem is I am hasty. This painting took me about an hour, watching the videos and thinking about things. I wonder if ever anything sinks in! Despite that, exercises like this are always valuable …

Shari Blaukopf class; crocus; watercolor on Arches CP 140#. About 8×8.

Flower Quickies

I spent the most part of today slogging along in the Dog Free Zone. Emptying out old pots, refilling them, pruning, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping, planting bulbs, cutting back overgrown critters, toiling away in a sweltering 67F for 3 hours. Poor me, eh? But just imagine what I will see in a few months!! And I still have seeds to plant as well.

So, I was honestly too tired to focus on anything requiring logic. I needed to just paint. Flowers seem appropriate given all the gardening. And I also have a couple of dozen of dazzling orangy red tulips. Trust me, the real ones look far better than this painting!

And then there are those wonderful flowers – bulbs – which grow and bloom in winter, when all is drab and drear. Crocus anyone? Here, a bit of snow is all that is left.

Each of these paintings was done with a time limit of 30 minutes. You can make a lot of mistakes in 30 minutes and paint some truly awful stuff – that is why quick studies can be so educational. And you can paint some great stuff, and wonder, how the hell did you do that!?

This became more of an impression of crocus rather than a detailed study. To tell the truth, I have never seen a crocus in my life! I can imagine the joy they bring, though, as they peek through the last of the winter’s snow. Hyacinths were the bulbs that bloomed in the snow in the midwest, soon followed by tulips and daffodils. I tried to work with negative space to define the flowers, as well as blur the background and put a bit more detail in the foreground – perspective in action on a conscious level!

This is the reverse side of the paper I used yesterday, St. Cuthbert’s Millford. This paper has a really nice tooth, not smooth or CP, and smoother than rough. It catches the brush bristles rather nicely. Colors are dreamy when blending together. It also lifts well – some color ran into another area and I was able to lift it out and recover to a degree from the mischief. I don’t know if Arches would handle it as well as this paper, but that is something I should check out.

In addition to no longer making masses of mud, I find I am actually remembering things – make long brush strokes, lay down large areas of light colors and leave the whites in the process; think about the direction of the light; a few rules about perspective.