More Pansies

Here is my last post from St. Lucia. I am looking forward to getting back to my oils and creating some oil paintings taken from photos of this beautiful island.

                                  

Pansies

I have been using my watercolours in St. Lucia and finally I think this is the one I like best. These pansies have a softness and delicacy about them that is appealing. It's interesting that my favourite flower ends up to be successful in watercolours. 

                        

Peonies

Of the flowers I have completed, this is my favorite.

    

                         

When I looked at this watercolour on my blog, I realized the painting did not "read" properly. This is a painting term that means some thing in the painting did not work. In other words something did not make sense. Look at the first painting, then look at the corrected one below and see if you can spot the change.   

                                

Hibiscus

More flowers using the same technique as previously.

  

                        

St. Lucia flowers

This painting with watercolours was fun!! I thoroughly enjoyed the w/c as I dripped the colors I had chosen on a wet sheet. When they  had dried, which took a while in this humid climate, I spent a an interesting half hour trying to see what possibilities for blossoms and leaves and composition were there. Using the same colours I darkened some petals, added details, but much of the time I concentrated on lost and found edges.  Overall, I wanted a very soft, suggestion of flowers so that the viewer could find for himself the interesting areas. I think I succeeded. I included two photos of the painting, one when it was just starting and one finished.

                               

Lands End

Here is another attempt with watercolours. St. Lucia, as you can see is a very rugged, tropical island and here we are at its northern tip where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean Sea. Old Volcanic mountains have created the landscape and as this shows most of the slopes are covered with tropical rain forest. Everything seems to bloom in abundance here and the flowers are fragrant, colorful and exotic.

                       

We have to continue to explore.

Pencil sketches

What fun to do pencil sketches again. This is how most artists start their artistic adventure and it is where I started mine. When I was a teenager I used to sit in the garden and sketch flowers for hours.I thoroughly enjoyed each moment and as I became more efficient, I enjoyed it even more. My art attempts were beginning to look like the real thing and the fun was starting to happen. This journey has led me through sketching to watercolours and eventually to oils. What an exciting adventure and such pleasure. 

So I am sketching again. Who knows where the journey will lead me this time?