Joyce's Clematis

Clematis are popular flowering garden vines.  You see them climbing along fences, up trellises and among the branches of other plants.  There are over 200 cultivars, which makes it easy to pick a flower color that is perfect for any garden.  Well, any garden but mine.  Clematis never are happy in my garden, and after several years of trying different spots in the garden and numerous cultivars I have given up on this vine.

Joyce can grow beautiful Clematis.  She has several well established plants that each year are covered in masses of foliage and blooms.  Their vibrant colors just scream to be painted.

I masked the central part of the flower so I could use a lot of water and not worry about the white parts of the anthers.  I wet each petal, then used separate brushes to add Quinacridone Rose and touches of Phthalocyanine Blue.  Once the petals were dry I painted the background leaves using a mix of Phthalocyanine Blue and Chrome Yellow.  Once the paint was dry I removed the masking.

I painted the filaments of the stamen using dilute Quinacridone Rose.  Additional touches of Quinacridone Rose, Phthalocyanine Blue, the color mix I learned about in Margaret Walsh Best's class, Burnt Siena, and Raw Umber were add to create shadows throughout the painting.

Daffodil still life

One of the delights of having a garden is to be able to pick flowers and bring them inside and continue to enjoy them throughout the week.  This is especially true in Spring when the weather jumps back and forth between warm and cold.

One of my favorite group of spring flowers are Daffodils.  They are bright and cheerful flowers that burst out of the slowly warming ground and bounce back from late winter snows.  They remind us winter will end and spring will return.  Picked flowers will last for days in a vase; long enough for me to find the time to sketch and paint them.

Daffodil is a common name used for bulbs in the Narcissus genus.  They are not native to the US, but have been a popular plant in gardens and parks for generations.  The common large flowered variety are often found along roads and in meadows.  They continue to thrive long after the gardens they were planted in are gone. 

The flowers have a central bowl-shaped corona, three sepals and three petals.  The flower color ranges from white through shades of yellow and orange, pink and red.  The corona and perianth can be the same color, or different colors.   There are single flowered and multi-flowered forms.  The multi-flowered forms often have small delicate flowers.  Some flowers are fragrant.