Hooray for Hellebores

I've come full circle in my art journey of 2015!  It began with a 30 day challenge to get me back into painting again, which worked wonderfully!  Then I discovered a new teacher that I went nuts over and tried for 3 months to learn how to paint like her.  Watched her 4 DVDs - some of them 3 and 4 times.  I submitted artwork for critiques and will be painting the same painting 3 times now.  What it has done for me is reinforce all the wonderful education I've had in the past 15 years with some incredible teachers.  I've gone round and round and have finally come to the point where I have the best of the best of their total techniques and can finally paint by myself - if that makes any sense!  I really like painting on the new Arches 140 lb hot press paper - good thing as I bought a huge roll of it!  And I really like the Schmincke watercolor paints and the choice of colors in my new pallet.  I've also learned that I need to take better photographs to paint from - if the light is not good in the photo, I can't do magic on the painting!  And to choose more meaningful subjects. 

I love Hellebores - this is the first of a set of 4 I am working on.  It's a different background for me - what do you think???