Agave and Wisteria

This week I painted the second of the 'Flowers and Foliage' at Avon Valley artists. I chose to have another go at the sunlight on leaves and selected a picture of an Agave plant as the subject. I was quite disappointed with the result as I felt it was too tight and too contrived and lacked any real centre of interest.

I do not always expect success, so was happy to have had a lovely morning with the group and the painting will join a pile of others destined, maybe, for the bargain browser at the summer exhibition.

A direct result of the Agave effort was a desire to paint something loose and wet in wet and to have a bit of fun with the paints.

I browsed my resource box and found a number of blue and pink wisteria photos......was not aware that wisteria could be pink!

The idea was no drawing, no pre-planning and just plenty of paint and water.

On a piece of Fabriano Artistico Extra White rough paper, I sprayed plenty of water in the central area, and dropped on plenty of cobalt blue pigment. I allowed the paint to run where it felt inclined and then added a few patches of white acrylic ink to create a few muted passages and left it to dry.

The next process was very hit and miss. I used the brush head to create the flower shapes, adding darks and lights as I went along and simply created the falling fronds of the wisteria across the page. It was as simple as that.

I added a few leaves and stems at the top and a few extra darks and lights ( using the acrylic white) and I made myself stop before it became over worked.

The flowers were all produced using Ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet and acrylic white.

There is very little detail in the bulk of the flowers, only in the ends of the stems and this is only very simple blobs of paint using a smaller brush.

A very satisfying couple of hours or so. Just a bit frustrating waiting for the layers to dry!

                                                              Wisteria     27x37 cms