Painting #121, a bit late again

Running behind again today, had to teach in Sturgis tonight, I designed this one and had the class start this, I might have gotten about 3/4 done, given the time, but, I paced myself so I didn't get too far ahead of them, they all did great, so when I got home, I finished mine, they will work on theirs in a couple weeks, when we have class again (we have it every 2nd and 4th Wednesday, the other Wednesday's, we have Blue Moon), so I won't be painting the same thing, I'm hoping I will have mine done before class, we'll see.

This was a combination of 3 photo's, I took these a few years ago (when I still had the Hibiscus tree, sorry to say, I killed it, I'm really not good with plants, have too many other things to do to keep up with them, and that particular one got so big, we could hardly get it in the house for the winter. Any way, I drew the flowers on a piece of paper and put some leaves in for contrast and for the compliment. I turned the photo's around so they made a fairly good composition, and when the drawing was done, I scanned it to make copies. The Wednesday class like me to find things for them to do, my other classes find their own things and I help them, which is not to say that it is bad for the Wednesday class, just that it's nice for me when they want to work on their own things, then I can concentrate on getting my blog done (except when they need me).

I basically started them by painting the flowers with water, then, using a thin red to make pink and some yellowish green for the new flowers opening up. When the buds were done, I moved them on to the larger red one in the foreground, I had them wet the flower and, attempt to lay the washes in so they mixed at the edges. Then, on to the leaves, I attempted to keep the green leaves at the top a bit lighter since they were new leaves, but the ones at the bottom were very dark. After that was done, I went in and fine tuned the centers, and put in some striations and wiped back to very light pink for the centers and laid in some opaque white where it needed it. I like this painting and I sure hope you do too.