Discovery Bay Rhododendron Progress

I'm still plodding away on my Discovery Bay Rhodie painting. I try to put in an hour early each morning on the painting before I start on my regular projects. I'm painting this to add more floral images to my Painting in Paradise web site. This is the painting style that I teach in my Painting in Paradise workshops.

It may seem difficult to you to paint anything in a realistic style, but in my workshop I break it down into easy, understandable steps so that you can get results like what you see on my web site. If you don't you could do this, just check out the "workshop" page on my web site. The two paintings that you see by Alice were her first realistic paintings. Karen's pink flower was her very first attempt at painting. I was very proud of her.

Regarding the above painting, I decided to depart from the usual realistic watercolor technique and experiment with a Prisma Color Pencil technique, using a colored pencil blender to "seal" the colors. This gives the image a watercolor-like appearance. Now that the petals and leaves are finished, I will  be working on the dark background. I'm looking forward to this phase of the painting because the flowers will finally begin to "pop", and gain contrast with the dark background behind them.

You'll find more information on my workshops here at my Painting in Paradise web site.

Discovery Bay Rhododendron, Progress

This Rhododendron flower that I found growing on a wild Rhododendron bush along Highway 101 just west of Discovery Bay in Washington State, USA has been my early morning-late night project over the last ten days. It will probably require at least ten more days to finish it, depending on how much time I can set aside to work on it. 

The top flower portion of the painting is now complete. I have enjoyed working on this project because I'm using a technique that I was not previously aware of. In preparing for this painting I discovered the blending brush. This unique brush contains a chemical that dissolves the wax in the colored pencil, giving it a "wet" appearance. 

Though I teach watercolor in my Painting in Paradise workshop, I wanted to try the colored pencil technique with the blending tool and see how it works. Now that I'm familiar with it, I might even incorporate the blended colored pencil technique into my workshop. If people would rather apply color in a dry media, they would have that choice. It would make things much simpler when you're working away from your studio as we do in the Cook Islands. Plus, it think it's easier for most people to control a dry media than watercolor.

I'm still looking forward to moving into the dark background portion of the painting. At that point the flower will begin to stand out. With no low-key background color, the high-key flower colors are still suffering from a lack of contrast. 

Check back soon. The next thing you'll see will be a finished rhodie in the lower right, which is still in pencil. Then I will begin work on the background.

Have you seen my other blog? It's called The Trowbridge Chronicles.