I have been painting dark to light for a long time (as taught by Laurie Goldstein-Warren). It works great for everything, really - but for flowers I was looking for a little more luminosity! So I was doing wet on wet and making a mess and getting sooooo frustrated. Karlyn Holman has written several watercolor instruction books and her DVDs are phenomenal. I think any artist considering making DVDs should watch hers first and learn from the BEST! Anyway, long story short - I had a couple free hours yesterday before the auction and sat down and watched one of her videos on painting flowers. Wet on wet, yes - but knowing which paints are going to travel in water and which are going to stay put!!! I was using Windsor Yellow (huge traveler) and getting lots of mud and blobs (and blossoms!). I need to play with paints first and see what effect they are going to have on each other when they are sitting in a puddle of water! Secondly, I wasn't paying attention to lights against darks (between background and subject) and learned the coolest thing! Put painting under running water (very scary - pictured all the paint going down the drain)....but actually I was able to lighten areas and not disturb anything I didn't scrub with a brush! I'm SOOOO happy!!!
#1 is before the sink and #2 is soaking wet, but you can hopefully see the difference! .
#1 is before the sink and #2 is soaking wet, but you can hopefully see the difference! .
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I'm not quite definitely finished - needs to dry completely overnight and I'll do some tweaking - leaves need more color and the stamens of the flowers need to be done. But I think the flower pops out much more in #2 than #1.
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