It's been a while.... first I hurt my knee, then Christmas crept up on me, and before I knew it we were round to a whole new year and I hadn't painted!
So, to start my creative juices flowing, I tried something different which I'd seen somewhere and thought looked interesting. I knew it was pointless diving straight into my usual style of watercolours, so out came the white gouache and the india ink.
Step one... I painted a daffodil, in watercolour. I can more or less do it with my eyes closed, so that was easy.
Step two... Once dry, I painted over the daffodil with gouache, allowing a few gaps around petals. I'd done a fairly simple background of green, so I quickly painted some foliage shapes with the gouache.
Step three... scary! Once the gouache was completely dry, I painted over the whole picture with india ink. It takes a soft brush and a gentle hand not to disturb the gouache. Again, let the whole thing dry completely.
Step four... put the whole lot under the shower and wash off the ink and gouache! Gentle rubbing helps... the idea is that the ink sticks wherever you didn't have enough gouache, so you get some accidental spots and splodges of black. It's all good.
Anyway, when it had dried after its shower, it need more colour:
So I added more watercolour and this is the final painting:
Then I thought I'd try again, but this time to improve a painting which I was unhappy with.... here are a couple of progress images and the final Hellebores painting:
