Snowdrop Paintings
[Image ID] Three watercolour paintings of snowdrops, with only part of each being visible as they overlap. [description end]
I started these paintings at a watercolour class back in February but the smaller two weren’t quite finished on the day and it took quite some time for me to decide what I needed to do to finish them.
[Image ID] Portrait orientated watercolour of two snowdrops and foliage, growing in the ground, on a blue background. [description end]
This was the main painting I did, and it is a full A4 sheet. I started by sketching out the shape of the snowdrop with watercolour pencil, then I wet the paper outside the sketch lines and dropped in various shades of blue. Once the background had fully dried I began to paint the snowdrop sprig into the white gap I had left for it.
[Image ID] Portrait orientated watercolour of two snowdrop flowers, along with some ivy leaves, in a jar. [description end]
At the class we had a few stems of snowdrops in glass jars on the tables to use as reference, and I decided to paint a more still-life style piece based on the jar. There were also a few leaves of ivy in the jar so I included those as well.
[Image ID] Landscape orientated watercolour of a group of snowdrops growing in the ground, on a blue background. [description end]
This piece is a stylised representation of snowdrops growing in a garden, but I decided to abstractify the background to reflect the general colour scheme rather than paint something specific. Like with the first piece, I began by marking out the areas where I would paint the snowdrops and filling the rest of the page with blobs of blue and green paint. By diluting the background paint with a reasonable amount of water those blobs of colour naturally feather out to create this mottled background. Once it had dried I painted in the snowdrops, and after that I went round the stems with some coloured fineliner pens to bring them into the foreground. The thin lines of a fineliner round the outside of the stems and petals added just enough definition for the flowers to stand out but wasn’t as harsh as if I had used a black pen.
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Watercolour paints: Windser & Newton Cotman
Paper: Daler Rowny Aquafine Texture
Fineliners: Steadtler Triplus
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Artwork ©Dragonsflyatsunset 2023, all rights reserved.