Agapanthus

Over the past few weeks since Christmas there have been health issues which stopped me painting anything but club exercises. These now seem to be well on the way to being resolved, and strolling through the picture area of a large department store, I suddenly had the urge to be creative.
I wanted to paint something light and airy which reflected my optimism.

Another attempt at Agapanthus seemed to be on the cards, and I wanted to try to show them growing freely as I believe they do in various parts of the world,
In order to keep the leaves and stems really fresh, I used masking fluid to protect them from the background wash. I did not need to mask out the flowers as I intended to use plenty of blue in the wash and so they could just be over painted.

I also masked out some background stems of flowers to add a bit of variety to the finished painting. The background was washed with mixtures of blues and pinks towards the top and pale greens at the base.I tried to judge the drying process so that the greens and pinks did not bleed into each other to produce dirty colours
When the paint was completely dry, I removed the masking fluid as I did not want it sitting on the paper too long as this can give problems when trying to remove it.
As a point of interest, a member of AVA used some quite old masking fluid and it had deteriorated to such a point that it could not be removed when the painting was finished. Better to keep replacing the bottle, even if its not all used up. It obviously does not last for ever!!

I then drew in the stems and buds of the Agapanthus, selecting an odd number and trying to give them some depth. I carefully painted them all using various strengths of mainly Cobalt blue. The trick here is to try to get them all to be slightly different so there is not a sense of having 'coloured them in'.
When adding the stems and flowers I also tried to paint some behind the leaf shapes and some in front.

I then completed the painting by adding the leaves, stalks and other flowers to the picture, once again trying to vary the greens and browns and painting some forwards of the flowers and some behind.

I am so used to painting much stronger images of flowers and still life, that I do wonder if it is a bit too pale. But it is hanging on the wall at home and is a lovely reminder that maybe I am ready to get started again.