Fantastic start to the year.. travelling back home for a week, I took everything with me.. except my colour palette!
Then bought a small 12 colour set yesterday .. that was the only one available in that small store.
Set out to paint and realised it doesn't half have of my goto colours.. ultramarine blue, paynes grey, orange and violet... Yes we can mix and make it.. but then for a large painting it's not easy!
I wanted to try painting ixora flowers .. my reference is from one of my photos I took last week at the neighborhood garden
These flowers had be be made in layers.. negative painting at the highest level. Tough challenge.. but went for it . And then I don't have pink.. have scarlet lake and yellow and crimson lake 😳 had to mix a lot of version to come close (can see from my mixing palette in the pic).
Hummingbird was a fun addon .. it was made blue violet to provide contrast.
Sketch
Made a better sketch this time compared to earlier scribbles.. this year I have to make sure I sketch better ☺️
Finished the flowers first and then went for the background. I mixed yellow and sap green on paper itself with help of spray bottle to do background in one go.. coz I didn't have my mixing palette 🎨
Finally fixed all the stray white dots and added bit more details and painted the bird.
Final
Total time: 90 min
10x14 in
440gsm handmade rough cotton paper
Challenging start for the new year.. one down, 99 more to go 😁