Olive Inspiration

A Taste of Spain, watercolour on vellum, ©Shevaun Doherty 2015

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy" ~Rumi

 Every now and then something finds you, and it whispers to you about golden sunshine, birdsong and the rich warm smell of earth. 

Paint, it says.

Summertime Blues

“Blue colour is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.”

John Ruskin

Blue is the colour that sings to us of heaven and sky, of fresh water and deep oceans, of spirituality, serenity and stability. It’s definitely one of my favourite colours, and yet I don’t seem to paint many blue subjects. All that is about to change, because I have a garden full of blues … tall elegant Agapanthus flowers that are just coming into bloom.

The first challenge with any new plant is the set-up. It’s great when

Laburnum Revisited

“Be Patient.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.”

Rumi

Patience is an attribute that every botanical artist needs to have. Choosing to paint from life means that we are very much at the whims of nature, constantly marking the seasons and watching the weather. It’s not unusual for a botanical artist to set aside a painting for a year whilst they wait for a plant to bloom once more or a fruit to ripen.  

In my garden I have a beautiful laburnum tree (Laburnum anagyroides) that for a few weeks each year, fills my garden with cascades of glorious golden flowers and a wonderful perfume that sends bees into rapturous joy. Every year I promise myself that I will paint it but time has always been against me. 

Last year I managed to do a small study for the sketchbook exchange and I promised myself that this year, I would be ready!

So I have been patiently watching my garden with a growing sense of anticipation. I have a gorgeous piece of honey coloured natural calf vellum which will really set off those golden flowers. 

Whilst I waited, I decided to do a few small studies to hone my palette. Yellow is a tricky colour to paint. It can slip from glowing to drab in a few washes, which makes varying the tones quite difficult. Some artists achieve wonderful results by doing a monochromatic study first in greys and then painting a wash of yellow over it. Others mix their yellows with tiny bits of purple to create shadow tones.

 Personally I prefer to keep my colours as clean as possible and use the large range of yellows available to create the tones. That said, a few shadow colours, purple-grey or green will slip into the mix towards the end if I felt it is needed.

There is no right or wrong way. If it works, do it!

So first to make a huge yellow colour chart. Yes, I really do have all those colours, and yes, the Daniel Smith dot chart makes me want to whip out that credit card and invest in a few more. 

However I resist the urge and finally decide on my favourites of winsor lemon, winsor yellow and new gamboge as my basic yellows.

My biggest struggle is always with greens, especially on vellum where opaque paints can feel a bit like kicking a lead-filled football around a pitch. So I needed to find a good transparent green mix. Fortunately my good friend Sigrid Frensen mentioned how nice turquoise was with quinacridone gold, both wonderfully transparent. 

Winsor Blue Green with Quinacridone Gold ... a fabulous mix!

So having played around with several mixes, I settled on Winsor Blue-Green with quinacridone and a little transparent yellow. I have had Winsor Blue Green for years but always ignored it as it was just too bright for any of my mixes. The Quin gold tames it beautifully.

Playing with green mixes

Of course it is not just botanical artists who revisit favourite subjects to paint, artists have done this for centuries. Each time they paint their subject, they discover something new. It allows them to develop their techniques, their composition and their colour palette.

Inspiration stimulates creativity.

My imagination has been caught! Bring on the blossoms.

“The glow of inspiration warms us and it is a holy rapture”

Ovid

Feeling fruity

What can you paint when faced with a messy week? 

Botanical art requires time, and flowers are notoriously impatient, dropping their petals like divas if you keep them waiting a moment too long. A good solution is to paint a collection of small things- subjects that can be painted in a short amount of time ... an hour here, a few hours there ... until you have filled the page.

"Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen."  Paul Cézanne

Summer fruits are delicious to eat, and just as yummy to paint. They are readily available, and come in a wide variety of shapes, colours and textures.  My only problem was that I have a habit of eating them before I have finished! Although I like painting fruit, I haven’t painted any of these before (apart from a very bad strawberry a long time ago). So each little fruit was a fresh challenge. 

It was, as Winsor Churchill said, like taking ‘a joy ride in a paint box’.

I started with the blackberries- lovely little subjects but so fiddly! Here it is after the initial washes of Cerulean, Cobalt violet and teeny bit of Paynes Grey.

Colours used are: Cerulean, Cobalt violet, Paynes Grey, Permanent Blue Violet (Rembrandt)+Viridian and a tiny bit of Perylene Maroon (Note: all my colours are Winsor & Newton, unless otherwise stated)

The blueberries had a similar palette, although I added Cobalt blue to the mixes, and a tiny bit of Cobalt Teal (Daniel Smith) in the initial washes for the reflected lights. I loved painting blueberries.

I didn't enjoy the raspberries. They taste delicious but are so difficult to paint. Initially I planned to paint more, but grew so disheartened with the results that I decided to eat the rest instead. Botanical revenge!

Colours used are: Perm rose, Ruby red (Schmincke), Alizarin, Quinacridone Red, Pink Madder (Fragonard), Dark red (Schmincke), Dark Red+ Perylene Violet

I now have a new respect for those artists who paint strawberries so beautifully, because they are also not easy to paint. The palette was similar to that of the raspberries, but with the addition of Winsor Orange Red.

 Rather than paint carefully around each tiny seed, I decided to take the easier route and used masking fluid applied with the tip of a cocktail stick.

 That worked quite well- I removed the masking fluid after the first few washes of paint, although you need to make sure that the paper is completely dry first or you can damage the surface. Even so,  I still had to painstakingly paint around each blob to create the illusion of an embedded seed. Thankfully it smelled divine and tasted even better, so my grumblings were soon forgotten.

I used the same palette for the redcurrants. They have a lovely shiny surface and a wonderful translucency, just like precious stones.

The kiwi was surprisingly straightforward, once I had worked out the colours.

The fresh kiwi slices were laid onto a piece of plastic to protect the paper underneath. 

Slowly building up the colour

 I started with Naples Yellow for the center, and then settled on a mix of Winsor Yellow Deep, Cobalt and Oxide of Chromium. I know that many artists steer clear of Oxide of Chromium because of it’s opacity… but sometimes opaque colours can work really well (I can hear the shouts of protest from here!). Besides, this is a bit of fun. I’m experimenting! The seeds were done in Paynes Grey.

Funnily enough, I was most daunted by the banana slices. However once I had figured out the colours, they were fairly straightforward. I used Buff Titanium (Daniel Smith), Naples, Naples+Cobalt Violet, Raw Sienna, Cerulean+Cobalt violet.  I can see myself having another go at painting a banana, just to get it right.

Summer fruits by Shevaun Doherty 2014

So there you go… a messy week, but I still managed to get a small painting done, and had plenty of healthy snacks to keep me going along the way!

"Above all keep your colours fresh!"  Edouard Manet