Spring Display

These tulips from my garden have brought a bright note into my house, so they deserve being remembered in a painting. I grouped them with other objects of similar colours to create a harmonious composition.

I just love the Chinese vase and have painted it before. My husband brought it home from a business trip a few years back, and he also made the little Easter arrangement of chicks and bunnies in the bowl.

Tree blossom

Another painting inspired by our daily walks. We still go out in all weathers to connect with life around us, which is so important in this time of isolation. 

Painting white flowers (this photo shows them too dark) is a challenge in watercolour as the white is the unpainted paper, and one can be tempted to go in too dark and lose the delicacy of the flowers. 

Plant pot in sunlight

I think this plant is an agave, a type of cactus. For the leaves, I used phthalocyanine green mixed with  different blues (cobalt, ultramarine, cerulean) and yellows (lemon, aureolin, quinacridone, raw siena) to create a variety of hues and tones. 

The background was painted mostly wet-in-wet to give an impression of an outdoors setting.

White Roses in a Vase

Watercolour of white roses

White flowers are quite hard to paint in watercolour without losing the delicate quality of the petals. It is important to choose a shadow colour that doesn't destroy their freshness. As these white roses had a yellow cast to the white, I chose yellow for showing their form.

For the design, I planned to paint some negative and positive shapes; I am particularly pleased with the lower left corner, which I painted wet-in-wet.

Tulips

 My cousin, with whom I stayed last April,  always has fresh flowers in her house. I took a photo of these tulips with a view to painting them at a later time.

I also had noticed that the tulips were in very little water and thought I was being very helpful by topping up the water in the vase. It turns out, however, that tulips stay upright for longer when one keeps the water level to just covering the ends of the stems. A tip I will try out myself some time!

Yellow Iris from my Garden

Yellow Iris Watercolour

I don't have to go far to find inspiration for my painting, as the flowers gradually make a comeback in our garden. We have a group of irises that have been springing up for the last ten years but didn't make a show last year, when I thought I had lost them for good. I was therefore doubly pleased to see them again this spring and decided to have a go at their complicated form.

Apart from watercolour paint, I also used watercolour pencil to draw in the yellow veins.

Lilies

With this painting, I went for a more minimalist approach, keeping the background mainly white and painting the flowers with just a few brush strokes. I hope that this conveys the freshness and delicacy of the lilies.

Lilies, watercolour