That is my goal with this painting. How do you do it? I think watercolor is a great medium for accomplishing this. I've seen it done so beautifully. So I am attempting to do it here.
One thing that helps is extreme contrast - the rich darks behind the sunlit petal. So, I added dark watercolor (greens, blues, purples, reds) in watercolor to the background here.
Then, I started adding pink watercolor to the petals already started, and then green to the leaves. I really enjoy doing negative painting. You can see this in the leaf where I painted the spaces between the veins. This is a popular watercolor technique, and sometimes I like to use it in a pastel painting.
They are finishing our new house. We are so excited. We have lots of plans for landscaping the back yard. On the sunny side yard, I plan a "secret garden", with hollyhocks on the fence, roses, raised vegetable beds, a small pergola for a little garden glider chair for me to sit under the wisteria and sip morning coffee.
Oh, yes, I forgot. The story about the house. Four years ago a friend told us about a new development and said we HAD to go and see it - see the model homes, and the one with an extra large laundry room off the kitchen that was large enough to make a craft room - she said I would LOVE it.
We went, we saw, we LOVED it. But, our hands were tied (we had to sell the Truckee house first). Once a year we would go back to see how many more homes were completed, and, to see if they lowered their prices since the market was starting to tank. The building was slowing down a little, but they were maintaining rather high prices in spite of it. Then, we heard they were selling the models and really slowing down building. We were still trying to sell the Truckee house, and we still could do NOTHING. We began talking about giving up the idea of having that house, that it probably would not happen. We made an extra special effort to NOT look at houses until the Truckee house sold - to avoid disappointment.
Then, a first offer came out of nowhere - for the Truckee house. We took it. It had an extremely fast close of escrow demand - 14 days - because he was willing to pay cash. It was a very low offer, but we took it.
One week after the close of that escrow, we had only one day that we could go looking at new houses before going on our trip to Williamsburg. It was a Sunday and we decided to just look at open houses. We spent the whole day, working our way south. The last stop was our favorite development. A different house was listed as an open house, and we knew we didn't like that house. So we went as our last stop.
I said - Wait! Look across the street! That is our favorite model and there is a sign out front (even though it wasn't listed on the realtor's website). We called the realtor and he came out and showed us the house inside. It did not have all the fancy upgrades the original furnished model had - including the large laundry/craft room, but that was OK! The large space was on the otherside of the wall as an extension of the garage - which gives us space for garage storage.
It turned out that the person who was buying it, could not sell his house in time and it fell out of escrow 3 days before the close. The builder was very happy to sell it to us!
And that is the story - we are amazed - it WAS meant to be!
