The actual Fred Martin Begonia is primarily a peachy light orange toned begonia. I've used other colours to emphasise the shadows in the tones and to try to capture the spirit and energy of the flower rather than its form in any sort of botanical realism. Well, really, I just wanted to make it more colourful ! I did try to keep and overall base feeling of peach tones.
I enjoy painting the begonias in macro style, as the petals are so large and lush they just invite you to delve in and examine them in more minute detail. The close up inspection invites an abstract quality to the lines. Begonias are really beautiful and one of my favourite species of flower.
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So last year and this year I've been trying to get into this "daily painting" movement, where the aim is to complete small scale paintings on a regular basis, quicker and more free style type works - like small studies - to help improve overall technique and to allow more experimentation. I really like this idea, though have not been able time wise to do this on a daily basis, I am trying to do these small studies as often as I can. I put the better ones up for sale and people seem to be buying them every now and then, which is an extra bonus !
These abstract flowers above and below are loosely based on non specific flower forms and the aim was to try to experiment with some wet on wet watercolour painting techniques, where paint has been applied on top of a previous colour that has not yet fully dried. Here you can see how the paint spreads around to create interesting effects and interesting colour mixes in the damp area. The paint will not spread out beyond the damp area to the dry area, so the outline of the flower will remain clean. The drips in this painting were deliberate to create stem like suggestions. The paper will need to be almost upright to create drip effects, whereas the paper was flat to help the colour spread around the damp area, so in these paintings, I needed to manipulate the position of the paper as I was painting. These quick abstract studies are very useful for exploring techniques and pushing my art out of my comfort zone to learn new things.... |
AuthorSacha Grossel is a practising Visual Artist from Australia. Archive
February 2019
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