Divine Color

Divine Color, a photo by momoo50 on Flickr.

Week 21 project for lifebook....Honoring my divine color.

There is a story behind this painting.  Tulips are my favorite flower and I love purple tulips so it felt perfect to draw and paint this picture.  However, getting to this place was not easy, in fact it was downright hard.

For years I have used rubber stamps and traced copyright free pictures because I did not believe that I could draw the objects.  When I did try to draw it looked very childish and i was sorely discouraged.  For this project I wanted to draw and paint my tulips.  On Friday I did a test run (pictured in another post) by drawing Nasturiums and Oriental Poppies.  I used various types of Media to color the flowers. they looked pretty good.  I was sure that I would have not problem with my tulips.

'Hold your horses Sparky', my muse seemed to say.  "Just what in all that is holy makes you think you can do this and post it?"  Looking at the pictures posted by other artists, I immediately got intimidated and discouraged.  There was just no way I could draw and paint on a large scale.  All day long there was this ongoing dialogue; "no one will like it, does it really matter, will you at least try?"  So at 10 pm, I sat down to create.  I drew a test in my journal and then copied by test onto my canvas (note to self 140 lb watercolor paper does not hold up well with a lot of water.)

I got my supplies together, had my iPad next to me with the instructional video running, tape on paper, let's get this show on the road.

1.  Wet your paper then draw outline of flower and leaves with watercolor crayons
2.  Keep the paper wet by spritzing it and start to paint with broad strokes the colors of twinkling h2o's. I used colors complementary to purple for the tulip leaves and colors complementary to green for the leaves
3.  the colors are going to meld, keep on spritzing.  I looked at the canvas and thought "what in the Hell?  This is an awful mess."  One week ago I would have stopped.  Not tonight, I allowed it to dry and it still looked like a purple and green blob.
4.  take watercolor crayons and put highlights in the petals and leaves, keep on spritzing.  Uh Oh, colors still mingling and paper is becoming rolling hills.
5.  Put saran wrap peices on the leaves, gauze on the leaves to get texture.  Put extra colors on the leaves cover entire canvas with saran wrap and put a heavy object on top while it dries.  Let it dry for a half an hour,
6.  Remove heavy object, pull back large saran wrap and spritz with gold
7.  put saran wrap back and heavy object let dry for  couple of hours
There are more steps, but it still looked like a hilly blob.  Idea surfaced why not outline the flowers with black posca pen to give definition.  Enhance the background with some yellow.  Put in white highlights and add more water color crayon.  Discovered that the crayon will melt under heat gun.  You can take a tissue to smooth the crayon---it is really a cool discovery.

I like the randomness and softness of this piece.  I like the fact that I stuck with it, I like the fact that I am growing and not giving in to the negative self talk.

Heck, I just love this painting.  I am pretty proud of me for this one.  I am getting ready to go and sign it.