Floral Demonstration - Two Works in Progress

I am often asked by the members of the Buckhorn Artists' Group to show how I paint various subjects. It can be anything from backgrounds, birds, animals or landscape.

These are two paintings I started as demonstrations to show how I approach floral paintings of irises and roses.

With the irises it was primarily what colours to use when painting yellow flowers. For the base coat on the iris I used new gamboge and added mixtures of raw sienna and burnt sienna for shadows.

Iris Trio

With the roses it was a lesson on how to paint the overlapping petals without them having an "outline" to keep them separated from one another.

A wash is put on the first petal and left to dry while another petal on the same bloom that is not touching the first petal has a wash applied to it. This is repeated though the entire flower.

With each succeeding wash more detail and shadows are added to give shape to each of the petals.

Rose Bouquet

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and enjoy the artwork.