Rhododendrons 

Half sheet 15×22 

cold press 300#Fabriano  

Based on some photos I took on Valle Crucis a week ago.  I am not wild about painting flowers. All the negative painting is just HARD!!  I usually do something terrible to screw then up and have to get out the gouache.  No gouache so far. Maybe I should quit?! 

 This was painted almost entirely with my Isabey squirrel mops. The stamens were done with my #6 Isabey Kolinsky sable. Love all those brushes. Their kolinskys point like no other brushes I own. Better than a rigger.
   

I started with a good drawing of the flowers. I still got lost painting them. All pink rhododendrons look the same. 

 

  The background is done with diluted washes of four or five colors that is eventually painted over. I tried to leave a lot of white and used light pink in the initial flower washes. Mineral Violet was used to do the negative painting on the flowers. 

 Beginning detail. 

Masked the stamens with a throw away kids model paint brush. I used Quin red for the pink hookers green on the leaves with Quin gold and ultramarine blue and mineral violet.  

  
Progressing

 The background blue is Inathridone blue or as we call it Pb60. It’s the blue in indigo blue. Drips are made by standing the board up when wet and slamming it in the table. 

  The splots are deliberate and done by placing the whole mop down on the painting with a light wash of color in it, ie more water than color. Fun stuff. Try it!! I also splattered some. If I knew where my toothbrush was I would use it to splatter too. 

 So Far

Here it is for now. I added a lot of small dots of color with my #6 Isabey Kolinsky sable. It might need more jewelry I mean dots but it’s too late and I am tired so that’s when it’s a good idea to quit for the nite I think. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX