How an idea develops.

Each year the same or similar images break out of the natural world and force their attention on me. Screaming to be painted.  One of those recurring images is the delicate Japanese anemone that appears late summer and stays with us in the garden until November.  The contrast of the shell pink and luminous white against the dark and dank "past their best" greenery is wonderful, and as mine are in a corner that only gets the early morning sun and then is in quite dark shade for the rest of the day they are like beacons shining out. For the last several years I have attempted to paint them both in oil and in tempera, never successfully.

 I started with this really poor watercolour, the drawing was badly planned and the flower shape squeezed itself into the rectangular paper shape. I then tried to work (as you should in water colour) in layers of colour retaining the lovely soft lights and creating the dark negative shapes. Not one of my greatest efforts and the pinks kept getting muddy.

So I decided to backtrack and work on a simple charcoal drawing, only looking at the shapes and tones and not worrying about the actual colour. this simple charcoal drawing (about A3 size) tok me most of a day to complete.

I felt as though things were looking up and the next day tried my hand at water colour again.

 This is the first layer of pale green wash to settle where the main flowers and brightest lights would sit on the page. Sticking fairly close to the image on the charcoal drawing.

 Here I have added some of the pinks and lilacs so that I can see how the flower forms will develop. I feel as though I have to compromise on the actual flower colour as the paints I have do not exactly match the flower so concentrate on getting the right tone and warmth








I then began adding more colour to the background, very gently layer by layer. You can see at the top right corner I managed to get two cauliflower bursts when the paint dried overnight - I had overwetted the paper, causing it to wrinkle even though I work on glued blocks of paper that are supposed to stay flat.  Adding more dark layers covered the mistake, but I had to take care as the paper was in a very parlous state.

This is the final watercolour and I am rather pleased with it. Its the first time I have managed to successfully retain bright whites, keep the colours soft and create dark enough areas to show the contrast between foreground and background.

 I was so pleased with myself that the next day I worked a similar image up in pastels, adjusting the flower arrangement. I don't think the photo does it justice and will probably have to trim the right hand side away if I decide to mount and fame it.

Not a bad weeks work.