Winter Jasmine...yellow stars in the February gloom

I've been toying with the idea of documenting a year in this suburban garden of ours with some paintings for every month. At the moment the Winter jasmine is coming into flower and is the only bright colour in the February gloom.

I like the way it grows in a very untidy heap so that the tangle of stems and leaves adorned with the bright sparks of flowers provide a great opportunity for negative painting fun.

I masked out some of the flowers I'd roughly drawn straight on to the paper before laying a wash of yellows and pinks to begin with and then streaking darker colours into the wash wet in wet to represent the twigs and stems. Because the wash was wet the twigs ended up soft and out of focus. But I made sure that a lot of the yellow stayed uncovered. Then I worked into the first wash after it was dry and found leaf and twig shapes.

Finally I removed the masking off the flowers and painted them.