Category Archives: Flowers as a Medium

Color Storage Experiment

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Today I began an experiment with the orange Lilies’. As I do not have any use for the colors they are giving at the moment, I figured now was a good as time as any to see if harvesting the essential parts and saving them in various means might yield fruit.

They have to retain their moisture so until I learn of some other possibilities I have placed a few anther wrapped in a leaf into both the refrigerator and the freezer and will take them out in a few weeks and see how the colors are holding up.

It is mostly the anthers that I am concerned with as they tend to lose their gusto over time as their pollen is harvested or just dries out.

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Pictures of some of the flowers used

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I had a chance to take some pictures this morning.

The first two are the purple and yellow Pansies I have been using to make most of my blues. This first image is very purple and the color it gives when wet is purple like the leaves, but dries various shades of blue. A week ago there was much more yellow in the throaat then there is today when I took these.

When using any of the Pansies they tend to leave a fair amount of debris, but if you wait about ten seconds for things to dry you can brush it off, if you wait more than a couple of minutes the debris will dry in to your painting, if that is the look you are going for, great, if you want to minimize the plant matter in your finished product you will want to stay on top of keeping it off.
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This is a slightly different colored Pansy that gives similar results.

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These orange Marigolds give a brilliant orange on thick stock paper, but tend to leave a lot of runny debris on canvas. They are ok to use first, or if you clear a spot to add it in, but they do not work to add on top of other colors.

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And the last image for the moment is the Black Hollyhock which by far gives the brightest purple I have found yet. Challenges with it include that it is very sticky to work with, it can wipe out previous layers if not careful and it will leave a lot of debris that is hard, if not impossible to remove.

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I’ll probably do a few posts on Hollyhocks in general because in addition to the vibrant purple I have also discovered something magical with White one’s that I was not expecting.