Olympic Tulips

Ted and Lucinda gave me a lovely bouquet of tulips on Friday. Really dark red, intense. I couldn't wait to start drawing and painting on Saturday. I spent a good bit of the afternoon playing with the shapes and colours.

I started with the flowers, using madder red dark, brown madder and ultramarine. Once the petals were dry enough, I painted the leaves in cobalt blue and aureolin yellow.  The result was lovely, but on a stark white page, not enough of a painting.

I decided to experiment with Shirley Trevena's texture and colour advice, applying masking tape to create sharp delineation. The textures were done with wax, oil pastels and squidgy. I went for bold colours - dark darks with Indigo and Prussian blue, electric blue with cobalt turquoise and cobalt blue.

The result is a bit mad, I admit. It looks like a vase of tulips at a window looking down over an Olympic pool. Hence the title! I do like it, but I'm not sure we'll find a place for it on our walls!