Thursday, July 15, 2010

Sunflower


Here is probably the loosest thing I've ever painted...and it was such fun. While at our art retreat, Pat Coburn showed us the neatest technique for this loose style using just a hit of basic color and then lots and lots of clean water mopping. The painting basically paints itself when you just drop in water and let it do it's thing. Such fun, and so spontaneous...sure does make for clean, fresh color with no mud...and that's saying a lot for watercolor.


This is small...9x11...and paints were AJ cobalt, sap green, perm red, quin burnt orange, gamboge, and lots of good clean water. I drew the center for a starting place and then just brushed the petals in loosey-goosey...such fun painting that loose as I am a tight painter. I'll definitely use this technique for certain subjects...don't think it will work on glass or crystal, but it's lovely for florals. If I painted portraits, I think this would be fabulous for softness...but...I don't paint portraits just yet.

7 comments:

  1. and it is a stunner, Mollie!
    You really have a knack for looseness too :)
    xx

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  2. Its beautiful,Mollie!Those white spaces and the transparency in this painting make it very special.Congrats.

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  3. Mollie, this is so fresh and transparent! Thank you for sharing this technique...there may still be hope for the tight painter that I am :-)

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  4. Loose as a goose and pretty too.

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  5. Wonderful, you can definetly tell you had fun with this :)

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  6. Thanks for your nice words, everybody...this one was really fun. When I'm painting this fast it's hard not to go back in and "fix" some "booboo"s, but when the painting is done it seems best to just leave it alone so as not to muddy up things. It's so easy to just pick things to death..if you've ever done that?

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  7. Mollie, your sunflower is beautiful! Why aren't you posting these new paintings on Artcolony? You are good with the loosey-goosey stuff. You rock!

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