It took a lot of creative courage, but I finally got to adding the first stage of the flowers to my portrait of Nikki. As I said last week, I’m attempting to follow Suzanne Allard’s method for painting florals.
Previously, I’d sketched the flower outlines, using a wonderful book, Flower Color Guide by Taylor and Michael Putnam, for references. It was great having so many flower forms to choose from. The colors I chose, though, are not necessarily true to the species, but just the colors I wanted to use.
I used my acrylic craft paints which are mostly opaque. And since I mixed white with so many of them, they ended up even more opaque. I usually paint with transparents—or a few opaques along with the transparents—but this technique relies quite a bit on the opacity of the paints.
It started out really difficult. I was completely intimidated and, in the end all I could do was start and then keep going!
This piece needs a lot of work and there will be more layers and more detail to come. But I’m not as reluctant and hopeless (!) as I was when I started.
By the way, the photo below is of the very first layer, which is darks placed here and there. Mostly, they get covered in later layers, but the idea is that in some places they'll show through. I think this is supposed to be a marker for maintaining a good range of contrast as the painting progresses. But isn’t it just awful? I sure am glad I had Nikki in the middle of it all from the beginning.
Despite my self-criticism, I’m hopeful that all will be well in the end.
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