Tulip Studies

I found a great bunch of tulips at the market last week. I may work them into an acrylic painting, but for now, I've photographed them, then painted some quick watercolor studies in my sketchbook. 

Open Tulip-Days 5 and 6, Final

© Ellen Blonder

This is it.

Open Tulip-Days 3 and 4

© Ellen Blonder

Grading the reds into yellows is slow and difficult, and I still don't have the right yellow on the base of the petals in deep shadow. I'm tempted to give up and retry this on canvas.

Open Tulip-Day 3

© Ellen Blonder

Getting transitions from red to yellow on the petals is going to be the hardest challenge. I'm sorry I didn't choose canvas instead of the smoother surface of masonite.

Open Tulip-Day 2

© Ellen Blonder

The colors will change a lot, but I wanted to get rid of all that white. This is very rough.

Open Tulip-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

I can't say this looks very promising at this stage. I've been wanting to paint this open tulip for a while, from a photograph I took in Toronto last year. It's on a 12 x 12-inch square of masonite.

Tulip

© Ellen Blonder

Not every greeting card design I do gets published. Here's one I always liked that didn't get used. It's painted on canvas paper, about 5 x 7 inches. I usually paint much tighter than this, so it was fun to loosen up and finish this in less than a day. I put gold paint on some rubber stamps to stamp the text.