Behind the Scenes - Thistle watercolour

At the moment I'm keeping a lot of balls in the air - a couple too many, in fact. You'll see this from the next few entries from designing a font to screenprinting etc.

Having been invited to have a small exhibition of my orchid giclees I thought I'd better do one or two large watercolours as originals and looked around at flowers here because I needed a change from orchids. Many English flowers are typically textural and multipetalled- rose, peony, hydrangea - unlike the simple flowers I like painting such as the strelizia, agapanthus, orchid. I'm sure there is a botanical reason, but anyway after discarding fuschias because of their "little girl colours" I looked at wild flowers - I love poppies, but the massive ones have gone to seed. Buttercups are very sweet and humble but yellow does not scan well for my cards. Then I became fascinated with thistles.

This watercolour is quite large - 45cm, as you can see from the thistle itself - "Sea Holly"
Below is my "behind the scenes" bit. The blueish violets were done with Holbein Violet and W&N Ultramarine blue, green shade. I've discovered a new green - Schmincke Phthalo Green (pronounced Tallo)
It's quite bright and luminescent but mixed with Permanent Rose makes a breathtaking Prussian-sort-of-Green and mixed with Olive and Paynes grey makes a soft subtle shaded green.  I've always found greens to be a problem - Sap Green is weak and fugitive, Prussian Green is fugitive, some greens look just so synthetic and creamy, like green felt etc.

So here are some of my greens: left to right, first row:
W&N Quinacridone Green Gold
Phthalo + a touch of W&N Olive Green
Phthalo + Olive green + W&N Paynes Grey

second row:
Phthalo + Permanent Rose
Phthalo - pure (I don't think I'll ever use it pure)
Phthalo + more Olive

third row:
Phthalo and Olive
Manganese blue and Cadmium Yellow Pale
Olive Green
(you can see these are my own scrappy colour tests - so badly arranged!)
The Quinacridone, Phthalo and Olive are all transluscent and "cabbage" beautifully if water is splashed on them. I also ended up mixing the greens with violet to darken them.
I hope to show you the finished thistle by Friday or Monday.

P.S. Definition of PHTHALOCYANINE: a bright greenish-blue crystalline compound C₃₂H₁₈N₈; also : any of several metal derivatives that are brilliant fast blue to green dyes or pigments 

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