The next thistle

I woke up and realised I had a demo of watercolours at noon.
I stretched a large piece of watercolour paper for a 45cm square painting.
Then I jumped into my car and whizzed around the village looking for thistles.

I picked lots of little ones and suddenly saw My Thistle - the one I've been hunting for.

I am painting this in situ. at the gallery where my exhibition is. How do I paint this without too much detail? I decide that the mauve "petals" should be understated - just a few will look like quite a lot. I work with the actual thistle next to me and a photograph as a back-up. The back-up is to check my design, perspective, composition and also to isolate the bit I'm doing. So its really nice to have both. If I don't have a photo I sometimes photograph it and then check the photo on the little camera screen. The real thistle helps me breathe the air around it, and catch the flower's aura. I suppose it helps me connect emotionally with the flower as well.

First a background wash to define the colour areas. The lightest areas will be the whites and palest mauves. I mixed the dark colour at the base of the mauve using quinacridone red, Paynes grey and Holbein purple.

To keep the areas light or white, I use masking fluid - I like the blue Pebeo Drawing Gum (it even works well in a calligraphy pen which no other masking fluid does.) I try to get a hint of the fluffy network between the spikes on the lower part of the flower by using a drawing pen, and a brush for the "petals". I condition the brush first using Fairy liquid and this way the masking fluid doesn't wreck it so much. Always use less expensive nylon brushes for this but make sure you can still get a point on the brush.

If you half close your eyes and look at the swollen base of the flower, you'll see it is a sphere with a dark area gradually lightening - and this means of course that the spikes are light then as they get to the edges they seem to darken. Mmm. 

I'm doing a demo and somehow I lost my concentration and now the flower axis is wrong. I'm trying to correct it.

Another demo today - I'll drop the hired glasses off from our party and go to the art gallery in Wantage. I have to make green tomato chutney in the afternoon because this year the tomatoes didn't ripen well. Too much rain and a really inadequate summer!
I hope I get the axis looking better.

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