Watercolour Flowers
Please take a look at my gallery of watercolours here
A few years ago, I was quoted in our local paper as saying,
It is all too easy these days to take a photograph and edit it with the aid of sophisticated digital software, change its colour, turn it upside-down, inside-out, smear it, blur it, sharpen it, colour it sepia and then print it out as a marvel of modern technology.
Having said that, I do of course love photography, and often do just that. But when it comes to painting, I still love to re-create the beauty of flowers and plants, not only with a camera but through a paintbrush.
I thoroughly enjoy the painstaking task of re-capturing every detail of the living plant and often spend hours on a simple petal, painting each and every vein or hair individually with the tiniest brushes I can find. That, for me, despite eyestrain and the inevitable headache that follows, gives me more satisfaction than simply taking a photograph and, moreover, a greater sense of achievement.
In the days before Darwin, Cook and other men of science, botanical studies were the only way of recording shapes, beauty and dynamism of previously undiscovered species. To my mind, despite the immense capabilities of technology, this is still the case.
Selecting and mixing colours, working with the versatility of watercolour and, more recently acrylic, matching vibrancy and studying variations, planning a layout and examining the intricacies of each stamen and petal are all part and parcel of the planning stages.
Even as a child, I remember how a new sheet of cartridge paper would excite me with its potential - it could become so many things.
My more abstract work has made a refreshing change recently in contrast to the intricacies of the plant portraits such as the iris. I have thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with straight lines, and a variety of colours, working through the colour spectrum completely as I did with the rose or looking at a familiar flower in a totally different light as with the narcissus where I used lilac, pink and violet rays.
Before finishing one painting, I usually have the next one planned, if only in my head and sometimes can almost obsess about it until I have it sketched out.
At any one time I have to have an ongoing project, I can't sit still for long, even if I'm watching a film I'll be doing - something - anything, hence -
