Today I finished the Peonies in Bloom

I had such a fun birthday the other day. Thanks for all the birthday wishes from my friends! One of my presents was a CD of the artist Loreena McKennet "The Book of Secrets". I listened to it three times while painting today! She has such a lovely voice. I want more of her CDs!

Today I finished the Peonies. It is evening now when I photographed it. The camera insisted on flash. Without flash there was not enough light. So, the colors are a little washed out in this photo, sorry. I tried to do what our instructor told us to do: keep one flower the focal point, and leave the other two a little loose and abstract. This is such a fun technique. I will have to do this kind of painting some more.

Peonies in Bloom - a Watercolor

Yesterday afternoon Lian gave a demonstration of painting peonies. These are difficult flowers actually. But he only wanted us to paint one - the focal point flower. The others would be abstract. We started by masking the focal point flower, and when the mask was dry, we "poured" the background. This consisted of squirting a waterbottle, dropping liquid paint into it or around it, and then squirting the water bottle again to spread the watercolor out and have it mix itself. It is really fun and random.

Next we removed the mask when the painting was dry, and remasked the stamens of the flower. Then we painted the main flower with negative painting and blending. The abstract flowers are painted the same way, but not as defined.

Lian's workshop was so much fun! And I learned so much. Visit his website at www.lianspaintings.com . If you have trouble getting there from google, try another search engine.

We did not have time to finish as you can see. But I know what to do. I'll show you later. Today is my day off! It is my birthday!!! My daughter took me to brunch (Daughter's Cafe) in Reno where we had Dutch Babies (a german or swedish style pancake) and latte. Later this evening my husband is taking my daughter and her husband with us to see the musical "Cats".