Updates

Been kind of a slow week. Painted yesterday, didn’t love the outcome and the pictures I took were too blurry, later in the evening when trying to spray one of the dogs to get them to quiet down I ended up dowsing both of the current works in progress and ruining them…so, back to the drawing board.

The one I was working on yesterday was a landscape piece, it started out with the purple spot shown on the middle right and I was going to make a Seuss type flower out of it, but instead decided it would become a moon after I used an Orange Pansy to make the mountainy scene below it instead of just ground. Later I added Purple Pansy for the sky over a mix of Orange Marigold and Yellow Pansy. Lastly I put a splash of blue from the Purple Pansies on the land to try and make a water feature…all in all it was probably for the best that it got splashed.

Sorry this picture is a little on the blurry side.

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This is what it looked like after getting splashed.

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And this is what it currently looks like after I stripped away the bottom half and then accidentally sprayed some Gaia’s Gold(a veggie wash/cleaner) that hit the top of it. My intention was to reuse the top half and do this image of a cloaked figure I have in my head, but I think I will be doing that on another piece now and will probably start fresh on this one. I don’t know if it translates in the picture, but here the spots are an almost fluorescent green.

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The other project I have been working on was my attempt to do something other than a mix of blues and purples. I used the Orange Lily, Its Anthers, Orange Marigold and Yellow Pansy for the four corners and then because it was there, Raspberry juice for the center from some berries that Lisa was working with. It made for an interesting, bright and shiny color but really didn’t do anything for the piece.

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Lastly a quick update on my science experiment for color storage. I accidentally…see didn’t pay any attention too, water the Orange Lily I bought and it dried up within a week and most of the leaves fell off along with the majority of the Anther’s drying up and becoming useless, so, I went and checked the samples I had placed in the fridge and the freezer, the Anthers were as perfect as the day I put them in there, the leave seemed to be holding up as well.

At present I can say refrigeration will certainly help prolong the usefulness of Anther’s and possibly of petals as well. More on this as time passes.

Oh and last but not least, I have been discussing having a Canvas Sketchbook made with a local canvas stretcher, it looks like my Canvas Palette Book will soon be a reality.

Pictures of some of the flowers used

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.