Current Project

Despite our busy schedule, I still manage to work on my watercolours. It just takes longer to get a painting finished. Right now, I'm working on a gorgeous purply-pink poppy.

The difficulty is getting the colour right - some of the samples I did with Corel Painter Essentials are quite dull, so I think I'm going to pump up the colour a bit. I have a lovely Schmincke ruby red which I hope will do the trick. And for the green background, I think I will rely on my good old Schmincke vanadium yellow for the first few layers (it's nearly fluo yellow - it will lift the dullness of my greens)

Here are 2 tracings I did on the Wacom tablet. I haven't decided yet whether I will get rid of the few petals from another poppy in the right-hand corner or not.

I think I might keep them in, as the corner looks too empty without them. But I have to figure out a way of painting it out of focus, so it doesn't compete with the main flower.

Next time, I'll show you a few of the colour variations I've tried with Corel Painter Essentials. The colour picker tool (it's like a pipette) is very handy for picking the colours from the original picture and dropping them on the drawing. But I found the resulting colour drawing a bit dull, so I experimented with it - adding more light at the top, and also increasing the red hue.