During a nice forest walk in the 'Kaapse Bossen' we made pictures of mushrooms, of trees and of each other and we were looking out for 'Christmas Card inspiration'. We were looking for pine cones, larch apples or any other combination of needles and the fruits of the same tree and high up in a tree we could see some cones that were as good as white.
My husband (who had the camera) made some nice reference pictures for me and I have been thinking about 'how to paint these' because the background was very blue and that would not do for a Christmas card. After some thinking I decided to paint these white cones and some of the branches they were in on a black background, using a combination of white gouache and watercolour paint.
Working on a white paper and painting a blue background using watercolour would mean that the cones would not stand out so beautifully as they did when the reference picture was made.
The black background unfortunately means that this painting will not be used for a card as the printing companies cannot handle all that black.
Zooming in on the picture revealed that the cones were not all white, but a shade of beige with a lot of white resin which created the white appearance from where we were standing. It was a tall tree, so we could not see details from ground level. I chose to paint them white, using a shadow colour to create the characteristic shape of the cones because that was what did attract our attention and gave me the inspiration for this painting.
The information about the materials I have used, the size of this work and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.
😊
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