Antoinette Blyth Demonstration, 15th November 2014
Flowers in Watercolour
Antoinette
describes herself as a Realist Impressionist Watercolourist.
What that means is that when creating her stunning floral watercolours she
is not restricted to the exact colours of the flowers or leaves. She is
free to interpret the colour of what is in front of her, to be more
evocative and romantic and she does this so well with luscious watercolour
washes in mauves, pinks and purples. Some flowerheads are quite defined
others are just suggested. The result is exciting and fresh. Masterful.
“Take the time to arrange your still life to create a good composition,
it must be correct at the beginning”
What Antoinette looks for is not just a round ball of flowers in the
middle but to have some flowers and leaves radiating out to fill in the
corner and perimeter areas. Then there is less background to paint.
The Arrangement
“Draw lightly you will paint lightly, draw tightly you will paint
tightly”
Antoinette started her demonstration drawing a lovely well composed
setup of pale orange roses in a vase with cloth drapes, some of which she
said were her scarves.
First
Washes
“Drawing is important and observe carefully”
She drew in a loose style not drawing every petal exactly but capturing
the character and feeling of the roses. She pointed out the importance of
selecting about 5 main flowers to draw carefully, the other flowerheads
she would suggest with colour washes.
Choice of paper
Antoinette's choice of paper was 300gsm Waterford rough and sometimes she
uses Arches rough for white flowers. Her advice to beginners is “not to
start with rubbish paper as you are wasting your time” She did use some
masking fluid for highlight areas.
First
washes dropped in
Antoinette's first washes involved wetting the paper and dropping in
colour to fill the flower areas and leaf areas, the colour ran and merged
in parts and looked very fresh.
This half strength under-wash was dried and the centres of the main
flowers were painted in “you have to establish your darks first”.
Then the petal shapes followed, painted in their final full strength colour. Leaves and background were painted next.
Real magic- a masterful work
Of course the real magic of Antoinette's painting cannot be simply
described in words, you had to be there to see how she mixed and blended
her colours, to see how a leaf could be painted not just in one colour –
green, but a luscious green made from yellow and blue merging ‘wet in wet’
or a cerise cup (rose lake and cobalt blue) tinged with violet on the dark
side, orange tangerine with cooler red shadows. We were privileged to see
a masterful work in the making and Antoinette's skill and expertise made
watercolour flowers look easy and fun!
At
left: Antoinette and the work in progress
Above: The completed painting
Newsflash: you can see more of Antoinette's work on her website at www.antoinetteblyth.com
Thank you Antoinette and well done. - Alan Close