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These two flowers are growing side by side in the garden at the moment. ( It's such a shame that such a beautiful flower as the scabious should have a name so closely resembling a nasty disease!) It is a glorious flower in its form and colour, but not the easiest to paint in watercolour I have found.
Anyway I run the risk of you giving up on me if I don't show you what I've been doing. So here are two paintings I've done. The smaller one is looser and more spontaneous, I suppose or just plain untidier! Anyway the pictures are my response to the garden scene. The flowers do grow all on top of one another at this time of year and intermingle in the flower bed and this is the effect I was after.
The colours I used were cerulean, cobalt blue, quinacridone gold, aureolin, indian yellow and for the darks, quin. magenta, Winsor blue and quin. gold. I masked out some of the cosmos and then put in a wet in wet wash to begin with, laying in the colours carefully so that I could bring out shapes negatively from the background with darker washes.
