For this exercise, I didn’t want to include any other objects as I wanted the tulips that I chose to be the sole subject themselves, as coming into the spring months, it would be lovely to create a more delicate and simple still life. With this piece I waited a few days just to let the tulips droop slightly, as this in itself would cause more composition and arrangement within the bunch of flowers. I also chose to paint this in a day, solely due to the drooping of the tulips and the fact that they would not keep unlike some bunches. With this being the case I took several photos experimenting with composition ideas where a vase of the tulips sat by our kitchen window in portrait format, and chose to add some brown paper, as if to give the illusion that someone was just arranging them into the vase from the wrapping they had come in.
I had previously experimented with watercolour to try and create the tulips, but found watercolour to watery a medium, and so had my first try with gouache, which worked incredibly well, as I found it could work well watered down, but also straight from the tube. I also found using a thicker medium easier to create tulips with due to the fact you could blend colours together put also layer the paint up to create depth and shape. After having selected the composition I wanted to created, I lightly drew two simplified versions next to the tulips in gouache and swatches of the colours I intended on using, and then began to convert the composition onto an A2 sheet of mixed media card.
After sketching, I went straight into painting with washes of gouache and gradually thicker layers of the medium, and actually found it to be rather fast drying, and so the painting process was sped up considerably against the time it would take with water colour. With then adding a simplified kitchen background and a sky view from the window, rather than brick, I was able to create the illusion of a beautiful and light spring morning that presented the tulips as the main feature of the piece.
As I had never painted before, I am extremely pleased with this piece, and believe it may be one of the best out of part two of this course, due to cheerful and calm mood it presents and shall be experimenting with flowers more often.
SOPHIE FAWCETT'S OCA LEARNING LOG 