Revisit and Renew – Grevilliea 2

Grevillea 2 Reborn Sep 13
Coloured Pencil, Ink and acrylic paint 50 x 70cm

This painting was started in early 2012, and it was in an April blog.  I had given it a dark green background and it didn’t work, which made me sad as I loved the grevillea flower, it is one of my favourites.  So I put it away to wait for inspiration.   It was a long time coming, but it finally arrived.

Grevillea 2 Progress Old background

After cutting out the paisleys and raising them up slightly off the painting, I though that the effect would work for this one.  I loved the 3D effect of cutting out the image and floating it above the page.  The shadows thrown by the image are fabulous, or at least I think so.

Grevillea 2 Detail

So nothing daunted I got out the knife and starting cutting into the picture.  I can’t tell you how happy I was to see the ugly backgound drop away the the flower to reappear again in all its glory.

Grevillea 2 Detail

This time I has wised up and used these great little foam, double sided glue dots, which were so much easier to use.

Happy with the result and so glad to have found a resolution to one of the problems in my portfolio.

Karen

Gerbera Re-worked

Gerbera reworked 70cm x 48cm

I have been back a couple of time to the Gerbera and I think that I have sorted out a couple of problems and improved some others.  I have decided to stop fiddling with it as it is in danger of being overworked and loosing any of the freshness it has.

What I have done after the very helpful comments from fellow bloggers and friends is to

• I looked at the shapes as a whole and shaded it accordingly, in the calyx especially it now curves around and works so much better.
• With the petals I also treated them as a whole and lightened the petals as the front and darkened those at the back.  This has helped and I am better pleased with the outcome if not completely happy.
• I didn’t touch the background, have really come to like it.

So it has been a difficult painting but I certainly learnt a lot from it and that is a great outcome.  See below for the First Draft and the final.

Karen

Gerbera reworked

Gerbera first draft