Two more finished!

For the past month or so, I've been working on this series of four pieces for my aunt. So far I've finished three and am currently working on the fourth one. Just wanted to show the two newest ones to you all.

 Hibiscus - I really like how this turned out. As I am painting these, I am noticing that I go through many stages of how I feel about piece. I start out hopeful that it will turn out nice. Then I become frustrated that it doesn't look good and I don't like it. And then eventually I grow to love it. When I was working on this piece, the hibiscus flowers were my main source of frustration. Flowers are difficult to paint. I think it's because they are so delicate, you want to say as much as you can without making it look too heavy. The good thing about the style I work in, is that I'm not going for realism. I'm going for a likeness, but in a breezy, illustrative way.

Queen Anne's Lace - I became super frustrated with this piece. When I first started painting the stalks, I guess you could call them, they looked like palm trees on a beach in the sunset. Not what I was going for. The purple-y part you see at the top was perhaps a bit too pink at the time and it just looked very tropical. I was going for more of a starry, country meadow look. I suppose the orange frisket I was using (I will get to that later) for the "lace" part of the flower didn't really help. Queen Anne's Lace isn't your typical flower. When most people think of flowers, they think of petals, not little white, furry, bumpy things on the tops of stems. Not to say that this isn't a beautiful flower, but it is an unconventional one. I decided to just go with a speckled white look which makes it look like a cluster of white on top on the stem. While I was painting over the little frisket dots, I decided I needed more of them, so I went through again, over painted paper and made more dots. That is actually the first time I've ever added frisket over paint--surprisingly. I was hoping it would add some depth. I think it helped.

I showed the pieces so far to my aunt last weekend and she really liked them, so I'm excited to see them hanging in her living room soon!

Oh, and the frisket! I finally found a frisket that I love! I had been using Utrecht brand masking fluid for the longest time (which I really didn't like) and I have no idea why I didn't go buy new frisket. Well, when I was downtown a couple weeks ago, I went to Blick and asked one of the employees what she recommended for frisket. She pointed out the Blick Liquid Frisket in the little jar.

 The great thing about this is it is actually liquid-y! My other stuff was all gummy and really difficult to use. This glides on the paper like I'm using paint. It's great. And I like the orange color much more than that ugly yellow. It's easier to see on white paper and under paint.