Something Old and Something New

After an unusually warm winter, February brings with it some cold air and some snow.  The Midwest has these dreary grey skies that get old for me about now.  I admit I get a little stir crazy this time of year. Just give me some sun, please and thank you.
About this time every year the grocery store starts to sell my relief for the dreary days. Primrose in bright cheery colors that I purchase EVERY year!  I cant help myself, and at this point I figure it's cheaper than therapy!

I also paint them every year. So as you can imagine, I've painted them every way to Sunday. I wondered if I should not paint them this year.  I mean how many times can you paint the same subject and keep it fresh?

I've been trying to do some new things lately.  Experiment a bit.  So when Brenda Swenson's beautiful negative painting showed up on my facebook feed I thought I should try that. I'm not particularly fond of painting a whole painting that way, but I truly envy her work and skill at doing these types of work. Why not give it a try?




So off I went!  First I picked three primary colors (I painted the warm red flowers with Scarlet lake, but used Alizarin for the red in my painting) to work with and sketched the flowers.  This painting is only painted with these three colors.  Then laid down a light wash of all three colors in place I thought they would show up naturally.  All of which I forgot to photograph, but you can see the light wash in the first photo. Then I painted the flowers in the positive.  I thought this would be a good way to mix it up.

Next I added a wash behind the flowers and begin to negative paint 

Then I continued negatively painting the leaves.
this was fun, but tedious after a while! 

Here is a close up after the leaves began to come forward.

And finally I added my darkest darks.

For some reason these photos will not come through larger, so I'm sorry for the quality. This is not a method I would use too often.  I'm not good at it and it sort of bores me. I like to let the watercolor have more freedom to do its thing!  That's what is so exciting to me about watercolor and all this control is not my thing. I do however, greatly admire when it is done well, which this is not.  I did not leave any whites on my paper. The process I've always read about leaves light washes, but no whites. Brenda has full instructions and beautiful examples on her blog www.brendaswenson.blogspot.com, if you are interested in the process.

So I tried something new. I'm not happy with it, but you have to keep doing new things to stay fresh.  I will revisit negative painting again, mostly because I want to master it!  But my frustration level was to high for such a happy subject!  So I thought I would share with you some of the older primrose I've painted.  They are not in order, and this isn't all of them!!  But I find most of these to be a better fit for me.  Which one is your favorite?  Enjoy!