Iris and Poppies, again

I had such fun painting the first one of these flowers that I did it again, from a different angle. Do you like one more than the other? Which one? Why?

Iris and Poppies

Today Cheryl brought a bouquet of iris and poppies when she came to paint with us. So I painted them, on a half-sheet of paper with a huge, round brush. The large brush and the fact that I propped up the painting as I worked made delicious, runny colors. I tried to paint pure color and drop in other colors while the first was still wet. Then I went back and added more shadows and darks. When I was done, I drew some of the individual flowers in my sketchbook. It's all the same poppy, just from different angles. Now I have another painting drawn out, from a different angle but I know I'm going to wait until I have more energy before I paint it (and hope I can remember what all those shapes define!).

Pears

I've been experimenting with pouring paint, using liquid watercolors rather than mixing up large quantities of tube paint. I often paint pears when I'm experimenting, so that's what we have here. Masking fluid in a random pattern, dry; yellow and orange paint dropped in all over and moved around using a spray bottle and lots of tipping the paper, dry; masking pear shapes, dry; brown, orange and a little ultramarine blue all over, dry; remove masking and glaze some definition of the pears. This is not a technique I will use very often because of all the steps and the drying time, but it was fun to try. Dr. Martin's liquid watercolor is too opaque for more layers than this one: it gets muddy and flat, even using analogous colors.