Open Tulip-Days 5 and 6, Final

© Ellen Blonder

This is it.

Open Tulip-Days 3 and 4

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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.

More Tulips-Day 3

© Ellen Blonder

The red tulip is done, but the peachy one still needs a fair amount of work--blending, highlighting and shading.

Red Tulip-Day 2

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This is one of the two tulips I'm working on, to go with the first 5 x 7-inch yellow tulip (see posts below). I'm still tweaking shadows and highlights and smoothing out color transitions.

This is my 100th post, by the way. Nothing like trying to keep up a blog to keep one painting.

More Tulips-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

I liked the results of the tulip study enough to want to paint two more on the same 5 x 7-inch size boards. The one on the left will eventually have a lot of green in its petals, and the one on the right will become mostly warm red with deep yellow edges.

Tulip Study-Final

© Ellen Blonder

It's nice when, once in a while, things fall into place without a lot of fussing. I suppose that makes up for all the times painting is a struggle. Here's the study of a tulip I started yesterday and finished today.

Tulip Study-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

I photographed the tulips in the garden after a brief rain several springs ago, but I'm just now turning this one into a painting. It's just a small study, on a 5 x 7-inch board. The challenge will be to capture the light and shadow without turning the shadowy yellows into mud.