Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

The Magic Bowl II (watercolor 9 x 9)

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Magic Bowl I. One on the things I thought lacking was textural contrast and I found the paperweight that formed the center of interest to be a weak point in the painting. The daffodil provides both color and textural contrast. I also gave the background more texture and contrast. I like the result much better. And it keeps the abstract design feel I was aiming for in the first painting.

I painted the bowl conventionally working from light to dark beginning with the daffodil and moving on to it’s myriad of reflections. I used hansa yellow light, winsor orange, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue for the flower. For the bowl I used phthalo blue, cobalt blue, cadmuim red, winsor orange and burnt sienna.

For the background concrete I applied several layers of burnt sienna and phhtalo blue. I salted each layer separately. Salting which is exaction what it sounds like (you sprinkle salt on wet paint) cause irregular lighter areas where the salt sat.

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Daffodils with Marbles (watercolor 8 x 8 inches)

One more still life of daffodils. This time I cut to the chase, just the daffodils and the vase.

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The Magic Bowl (12 x12 inch watercolor) $175.00

In many ways this was really a challenge painting. It took me some trial and error to get just the right amount of detail in. The metal marbles show a myriad of tiny highlights, not just the major one on top the few side highlights I have shown. The color in the marbles showed considerably more graduations than I have included in the this painting. In fact the marbles had no hard lines at all. But with more detail, the marbles ceased to look three dimensional. So simplified and simplified and simplified.

The palette was: cobalt blue, phthalo blue, cadmium red, burnt sienna, hansa yellow light, and hansa orange.   I used hot-pressed paper.

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