Gardenia at Dawn finished

 I worked on correcting values, colour, and unifying washes for the shadows. It’s finished except to wax it for protection and frame it tomorrow once I’m sure it’s dry.

Step 6

 The last couple of days I didn’t have time to paint (babysitting my three grandson’s). Today I concentrated on values and small washes of colour. I have to get the underlying values correct before I add unifying washes for shadows over large areas. I’m about 80% finished which is good because the deadline is in two days. I’ll be doing a lot more tomorrow. 

Step 5

 Finally, most of the petals have at least some colour on them. Next comes the harder part, adjusting values. I will pick the lightest and darkest values in the petals and start adjusting each one to make them lighter or darker according to those two points. I also have to soften any paint edges that need it. 

Step 4

 More work darkening the already painted petals and started on a few more. It’s amazing how dark the values have to be to show a white flower in shadow. Once I get all the values and colours right I’ll unify the whole painting with a very light golden wash. There are really very few pure white areas.

Step 3

 More glazes of colour working on getting the values as dark as I want them. 

Dawn Gardenia step 2

 Today I continued adding dark washes in the background. It will be black when I’m finished. I also started the first washes on some of the petals. The flower is half in shadow so many petals will be very dark as well. I couldn’t do a lot because of the wet paint all around the edges. 

Dawn Gardenia step 1

 I had originally started drawing this on a prepared board to paint in oils. It is going to be for our art club’s  annual show for this year’s theme “Flower Power”. The deadline to submit the information and a photo is the end of March. If the show was going to be online it wouldn’t matter if the oil wasn’t completely dry. But the museum has opened and is planning to hang our show so I decided that it would have to be done in watercolour. I quickly redrew it and have started on washes of background darks. It will be a challenge to paint swirls of white petals in high contrast light and shade.