Hedge bindweed, shades of orange

This is the last painting I made while I was in Milonga, taking lessons from Ad van Aart.
For my yellow painting I prepared a composition with the shapes of leaves, flowers and buds of the hedge bindweed and selected a section for that painting.
During a few moments spare time I coloured the leaves outside that section of my sketch and that inspired my teacher to suggest that I should paint the whole sketch in this fashion.

So I made a drawing of the whole sketch on my watercolour paper and taped the inner section before making an orange background. I used three layers of paint to achieve a nice background. Then I started painting the shapes of the leaves, buds and flowers that were in the orange section of my paper, using dark brown colours that were also in the background.
After this was dry, I removed the tape and started to draw the lines of the shapes inside the 'white' section with Graphitint pencils. When water is applied to those lines they change colours and the pencil lines can flow out a little. I have used that for the leaves and buds inside the white section. For the flowers I added another colour of Graphitint pencil and I have applied water here as well.
The lines that give the flowers their shape were put in last, on completely dry paper.

While working on this one, I closely looked at my composition, some lines and marks that were not planned initially were added to make the painting as perfect as possible.

This one was hard work, mostly on the composition part but again I have learned a lot and I will be doing more like this at home, in my own studio.
There are more variations on this theme to be explored and I am really looking forward to all the possibilities that lie in front of me.

More information about this painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Hedge bindweed, painted in shades of yellow

After I had painted in red and orange, I wanted to paint in shades of yellow. The hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) flowers grow in the garden of Milonga, so it was easy to sketch a few and make a composition using the shapes of the flowers, leaves and buds.
Our teacher Ad van Aart suggested that I should try to make my background first and add the flower composition later. For the background I painted three layers of shades of yellow, taking care to leave one corner almost white and to make another corner as dark as possible with yellow as my chosen colour.

From the prepared composition the best cut out (for the background that was created) was selected - with a little help from our teacher - and drawed on the dry watercolour paper using a watercolour pencil.
Using watercolour paint in an ochre colour I accentuated the leaves and the buds, the flowers were given an extra 'shadow' with my darkest shade of yellow. Finally the flowers were given their true shape by adding fine lines of a dark earthly red colour.

This technique - painting my background first and then adding some flower shapes - is different from the Umbels paintings I made before and I like the result even more. 
In fact I have made some more paintings 'like this' during my stay in Milonga and I have plans to make more of them now that I am back home.

More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com