Wildflower Meadow

This week at Avon Valley Artists Group, the subject was 'Wild Aspects'
There were lots of wild animals depicted by members and a few attempts at wild weather.
From the title of this post, you can see that, true to my leanings, I chose to attempt to paint a wildflower meadow. It is not something that I have attempted often in the past but as I do try to be a bit experimental at AVA I thought I would give it a go.
It took quite a bit of preparation, which meant work on the evening before the group met, and I was sure it would not be finished by the end of the session.
This meant that when I got home with the half finished painting, I remembered to take a photo, so am able to share a bit of the process with you.

I started the painting by opting for a high skyline, above which I lightly pencilled in a few trees.
Using masking fluid and a drawing pen, and a rubber marker, I covered the whole of the lower area with lots of stem, grass and flower shapes. I did this the night before to give the fluid chance to dry properly. By using the drawing pen I could get lots of variety in the thickness of the lines and I used the rubber marker for the more rounded fatter shapes of the flowers.
The following morning, I started by putting a pale blue wash over the tree area and well into the meadow, and a wash of variegated greens in the lower half of the painting. When it was dry, I painted in the trees. When this was dry, I carefully removed the masking fluid
It was then just a case of gradually working across the picture from left to right, I was able to work continuously as I did little bits from top, middle and bottom, allowing small sections to dry as I worked elsewhere.


When all the flowers and stems and grasses where finished, I over-painted some darker stems etc especially in the base of the painting. I added a few daisies into these dark grasses

I tried to make the meadow recede by painting the flowers in a bit more detail and obviously bigger at the front with only a series od dots right at the back with a few tall straggly stems growing into the sky area.
It was quite a repetitive process, and did take some time to complete, but I had lots of fun, and am glad I gave it a go!