Painting flowers well is a lot more difficult than it seems. Part of it is just getting the colors correct, and the shadows. A sense of depth and shape is not quickly achieved for me at present – I am still trying to get that. Still, doing a quick morning watercolor before work is a good exercise as I think about various things. This daffodil is from this morning – I spent about 20 minutes on it from beginning to end before getting ready for work.
Tonight, I plan to do another daffodil, preparing for it by making a value study in pencil. This morning’s painting, and yesterday’s, were done directly onto the paper, preceded by a pencil sketch on the paper. Let’s see if a value sketch proves to lead to a more successful sense of contrast and depth.
