Tag: tulips

Another Day in Late Spring

As I mentioned yesterday, I finished up Shari Blaukopf’s short course on painting spring flowers in watercolor. From crocus, we moved onto hyacinths, and today we have a field – or certainly a large patch – of tulips.

Shari’s tulips are more rounded at the tops, as are your standard tulip. Me, in my messiness and lack of attention to shapes, created ones which have more ragged tops, more open in bloom, and any other excuse you can think of for not adhering to recognizably-shaped tulips!

With that out of the way, this painting was a conclusion to all three studies. Out of all of them, for me the crocus was the biggest challenge simply as I am not familiar with them in reality – only pictures. The hyacinth was difficult because the flowers are small, 6-pointed, and blur into one another. Working with them as color masses, light to dark, with an occasional recognizable flower made for success in painting a complex subject. These tulips, while not especially tulippy, were my favorite to paint.

If you enjoy watercolor, I recommend Shari’s short courses – as I have before. They are reasonably priced, some are better than others, but in each one there is a clear subject and a clear goal. She has put together some “series” of online classes, too, which cover related topics. Many classes have a section for the student to upload their studies, and Shari is very good about getting back, even if it may be a few weeks later because she is away teaching in-person workshops.

Watercolor, 10×12, CP paper.

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!?

Tulips in a Glass Vase

Flower paintings are some of my favorite things, just because I like flowers.  Painting them is another story.  Tulips are such cheerful, seasonal flowers, appearing in the market for a short time; I always have to buy a bunch or two or three.

Determined to paint a vase and water with stems, to really look at them, I put the tulips in a rather coarse, rectangular glass vase.  The edges of the vase are wavy, and it is far from perfect, which gives it a rather pleasant charm.  It seems I rather avoided the stems – my picture got too big!  I’ll give it another try later.

Parts of this painting work, but overall it feels rather labored in appearance.  I’m not quite sure why – maybe too many glazes took away a sense of spontaneity as well as clumsy negative painting.