In honor of that, here are 11 Fascinating Poinsettia Facts You Should Know
Earlier this year, I painted a red poinsettia based on a painting by Ali Kay. Today I painted a white and pink one (always my favorite live poinsettias) on an 8×10 canvas based on an image by Cindy from Pixabay.
I actually painted this back in mid-May: it’s on offer from Ali Kay‘s “Fresh Paint” membership, and I never got around to posting. I went with my own version of the background as I’m getting tired of copying teacher’s work, lol.
I have some epiphyte cactus flower photos I want to paint so I decided to try out copying a similar painting by Teddi Parker. This was done on an 8×8 gessoed wood panel.
I finally finished the purple tulips. It’s not really my style, but I had to try it. If I could do it all over again, I’d either dilute the gesso with some water and use the biggest brush I could find (to minimize brush strokes / ridges, and I’d probably do it in at least a 10×10 size.
The finished version is on the left. Where it looks black, it’s not. That’s dioxazine purple. Also, I started out with a straight line between the table and the wall, but messed up with my salmon-colored paint. I’ll need to adjust either with the bluish-purple (likely) or the orange/ salmon color.
I haven’t worked on this project in days, because frankly I got a little bored. Too paint-by-numberish. I like this artist’s style — more here — for pet portraits and people, and am thinking about signing up for her “Fresh Paint” school when it reopens. But I wanted to see what “Fresh Paint” might be like by purchasing this lesson. We get the templates (which I like!) and then the color “recipes”. Her style is to use (more or less) complementary-color underpainting in pieces (not just one overall underpainting / toning). She also uses Masonite or wood panels that have to be gessoed first, rather than canvas or paper.
Also, I’m using an 8×8 panel and in all honesty it would be better if I were doing a 12×12 or even 20×20. (Those templates are also available as part of the class.)
Anyway, this is what I have so far, and I’ll try to finish it some time this week.
This red rose is from Carol Marine’s works on the Daily PaintWorks website. I wanted more practice with roses. I drew this one out first on a 6×6 birch panel.
I started with alizarin crimson, and then mixed it with either yellow, white, or dark blue to get the different red shades. The olive green leaves and stem were created with yellow and black. There’s one section of teal blue that really should be the purplish shadow color, there right in the center of the painting.
I can’t believe we’re already through week 11, almost 25% through this year challenge. Time flies! This is the week 11 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. The name is “Roses are Fair”. (In my case, I should say, “Roses are Abstract”, ha-ha!)
6×6 panel, gray underpainting from a Raw Umber-Titanium White blend.
I definitely need more practice with roses!
I painted this bouquet of roses from Jed Dorsey’s online class at Acrylic University. I’m fairly happy with the roses, not so much with the reflections in the vase. But this was fun!
9×12 stretched canvas. I copied Dorsey’s violet underpainting, but I don’t think I’d use that color next time. The violet color is truer in the half-painted image than in the initial drawing out image.
This painting came about because I had signed up for something on Ali Kay Studio’s website. I got a free paint-these-zinnias packet as a result, which included a reference photo, drawing template, supply list, and a photo of how Ali Kay did her own painting based off the reference.
I traced the template on to canvas, covered the pencil marks and did the value mapping in Payne’s gray (too dark, I think), and followed her process for underpainting (based on some of her YouTube videos). From what I can determine, she paints the complementary color — so the yellow flowers have a purple underpainting, and so on. On the whole, I think I went to dark on the Payne’s gray — not sure what color she uses — and in the past I’ve ignored pencil or charcoal marks (so I’ll continue to stick with that in the future).
I like Ali Kay’s style for portraits of kids and animals — not sure I’m sold for florals, so I went my own way and did my own thing. For better or worse. I am most satisfied with the flower pot, and using my brushstrokes to convey the cylindrical shape.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 