Primroses

Primroses

I have become obsessed recently with Spring flowers, and to my mind if there is a flower that best reflects the hedgerows of Devon it is the wild primrose, they are everywhere when they bloom, and a beautiful and welcome sight they are.

Spring is definitely springing in my little corner of the world, the warm sunshine is so welcome after the cold snap we had been having. I realise as I write these blogs, how British I really am, always talking about the weather, and the effect it has on me.

On my recent walk I snapped some crocus

The lovely snowdrops were hanging on

  

and then my first daffodil 

How exciting is that !

Now daffs are popping up all over the place, but the first one is always special.

But this week I wanted to concentrate on primroses, and backgrounds again .

However rendering them in watercolour is a tricky business , their pale yellow hue is hard to capture. I also wanted to shy away from a delicate rendition of them.

So I began by sketching them in quite a dynamic composition,

 

Then I began painting each flower, looking for the colours, looking very carefully, I used a very weak mixture of yellow ochre, cadmium yellow and lemon yellow, with a lot of water. I used blues and purple to add some shading and a brighter Indian yellow for the centre, look, look and look again, so you understand what you are painting

Keep going, but if you get too tired leave it and come back to it, no need to rush at this stage.

Once I have finished all the flowers I can go in bold and bright, I want these little flowers to pop. I am going to use, bright blues and dark geens, give the impression of leaves , add texture with salt and cling fim, give my painting a bold and contemporary background.

Once I have added one layer of texture I go back in and darken those darks , I want the background to have contrast too.

When I add my cling wrap I think about where I want the texture to be and I move it a bit so I can see the rough direction of the pattern, then I leave it overnight if possible, that way I won't mess with it.

Coming into my studio next morning is always a surprize , and hopefully a nice one. Taking off the cling film and seeing what has happened. There isn't too much to look forward to at the moment so I take my treats where I can and seeing the result, makes me happy...and yearning to have another go

 

 

I hope you can find some of that sort of joy in creating things at the moment, happy painting x

 

 

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2 comments

Thank you so much for sharing your process. Where I live in Canada primroses are only found in grocery stores and it’s still winter. I love your spring photos.

Carrie

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Like you the daffodils are my joy of spring, yellow is my favourite colour they never fail to make me smile.
I am goibg to try painting a little bunch of small daffs I took a photo of today on my walk, but using your technique you’ve shown here for the background. It has filled me with excitement to give it a go.
Thank you for sharing your process as always, you’ve no idea how brilliant and helpful these blogs you do help me create. I thank you for that 😊

Diane

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