- Experiment with marks
The vase shape wasn’t quite working, so
I drew it again, making it rounder and wider
using the same mix of Ultramarine and
Cerulean blues. I printed the painted pattern
with my fingertip and added the curling stalks
with the swordliner brush.
Using fingerprinting as a way of making
marks works well alongside brushwork and
adds another dimension to the picture; again
it takes a little of the control away and adds
something more unpredictable. The same is
true of using your brush a little differently,
whether using the side of the bristles or the
handle to draw marks. It’s fun to experiment
alongside more traditional brush work.
- Find your focus
I still wasn’t quite happy with the vase; it felt
a little busy, and distracted from my intended
focus of the painting, which was the flower
and foliage arrangement. To rectify this,
I used Permanent White gouache, tinted with
a (very) little Cadmium Yellow watercolour
in order to match with the off-white paper,
to block out areas of the pattern.
Once this had dried, I added more depth to
the background to distinguish it a little from
the vase by painting a wash of Raw Umber
across the area, and finally added more fine
stalks with Inktense pencils and blocks.
- Balance the image
I felt the two sides of the painting
needed to balance better, so
I added a couple more leaves and
a glimpse of another one behind the
vase to help define its left edge.
I also added a couple more of
the buds and stalks, a little detail
to the centre of the open narcissi,
some definition to the top of the
unopened narcissi bud, and final
details and shadows to the allium
bud and stalk on the left.
Despite these touches, I tried to
avoid getting too fiddly, so I stopped
working on the greenery after this.- Finishing touches
To finish, I decided to crop the image to focus the attention on the top part of the
painting. I also wanted to make the ratio of vase to plants more like 70:30, rather
than 50:50, as a division through the middle of a painting can render it rather static.
Working in watercolour with no preparatory drawing means that my compositions
sometimes won’t work. As a result, cropping becomes an important tool that can
make the difference between a painting that really works and one that doesn’t.