Pansies, Poppies and Hibiscus - Four Works in Progress

These are the four paintings that were used during the final watercolour class I taught at KAGS on the 26th last month.

My students had been told the week previous to bring in one piece of paper with a drawing of poppies and that they were to be masked out.

On another they would have drawn pansies.

Purple Pansies

The first thing I had them do when they arrived was to mix a yellow and a red in two separate containers and wet a piece of paper.

Then they poured the two colours over the paper and rolled the paint around to mix the colours.

The result was a peach colour and then set it aside to dry. 

Field Poppies

I demonstrated how one petal at a time is worked and then the next petal to be painted is not touching the first petal so the colour does not bleed into it.

Next I demonstrated how to paint the colour patterns on the pansy petals and that the lines need to curve in order to give the illusion of shape.













Hibiscus 1

Next I gave each student a piece of torn paper to use as a template.

They were shown how to paint around the template with mixtures of red, yellow and blues and allow it to mix on the paper

I quickly showed where to place the stamens and the direction of the curve for the lines in the petals.













Single Poppy 1

After letting them work on their own paintings for a little while, I had them come back and did a demonstration of how to work on a poppy.

I painted in the dark centre first and then added a few of the darker shadows.

Next I worked on the poppy petals showing how the creases have shadows, lights and highlights.

I will post these paintings at a later date as they are completed.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and enjoy the artwork. I hope you will return often.