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Thursday 21 June 2012

Daylily Progress on a Hot and Humid Day

As the temperature is over 30C today, its a good day to spend in the cool basement working on my latest painting. Due to the fact that I have to let the painting dry between layers, I am also often working on a variety of other projects at the same time. I continue to make fabric cards as well as try to complete my block of the month quilt blocks. I'm a little behind because I just finished the May blocks today.
My daylily painting is from a photo from last year and as I sit here blogging, I am noticing that my neighbour has a new crop blooming in his garden. I'll make sure I take my camera out and get some more photo inspirations.


I like to show my work in stages to allow you to see a little bit of my method. I have the main colours in place and now I just have to darken some areas to give the flower a little more depth. I will also add more glazes to brighten the colours.

Thursday 14 June 2012

Letting Go

It's been a few weeks since I've blogged, but I'm back. I had been working on a new Banner for our church, something I was excited to work on. I had bought beautiful fabric for the background and was going to use leftover felt that I had stored after finishing previous banners. I worked fervently on it and I was liking the results until I was almost completely finished. After I had added some of the last elements, I hung it up on my design wall to look at from a distance and realized it was too busy. I was really disappointed due to all the hours I had put into it, but there really wasn't any way of salvaging it, so I have had to accept that it didn't work and let it go. I'll probably find a use for some of the fabric so I won't toss in it the trash heap but instead I'll recycle it into something else. Oh well, not everything we create become masterpieces and we always learn something, even from failed projects. Now to move on.

A glimpse of my failed project
 I have a few relatives getting married this year and I usually present them with a piece of artwork as part of their wedding gift so I have begun planning various pieces. I try to come up with something that appeals to the couple when I plan and I have asked family members for ideas. This latest painting will be done on heavy watercolour paper with fluid acrylic. Fluid acrylic behaves like watercolour but the colours are more vibrant and it dries permanent so that when it is rewetted, the paint will not come off as with watercolour. The subject is a closeup of a daylily.

Daylily sketch

First colours, background
 As you see, I haven't gotten very far on this painting. Hopefully I will be able to get to it a little more often this week.