I’ve been up a ladder again today… well, all week so far in fact, decorating the spare bedroom. I only stopped to change wall paint brushes for watercolour, and I was at a bit of a loss what to do so I turned my attention back to the Kaffir Lily I started a couple of days ago.
It was looking a bit stark, so to begin with I thought I’d try and add a background. This is something I haven’t done much of – adding backgrounds in after painting the main subject, so I was apprehensive how well it would turn out… I decided for that reason that the experience in itself was worth spending some time on, and happily it worked very well. That grey/purple colour’s quite nice against the orange too (Pthalo Blue & Magenta).
I had a struggle trying to add detail to the flower heads, until I realised that I wasn’t going to get shadows just by adding more of the same colours… so I tried mixing in a little Alizarin Crimson and this gave me a darker orange, perfect for the edges and shadows.