Painting 20 - Daylily

Whew - twenty paintings under my belt! No wonder I needed a two hour nap today. Now I have to complete 5 more paintings by August 20th to keep on track for my 100 paintings in a year challenge.

I've been admiring and studying the watercolor floral paintings of Laure Ferlita at Painted Thoughts and Jacqueline Gnott at Contemporary Realism and have wanted to give it a go myself. So this morning I took my camera and walked to our local natural food store to photograph some of the beautiful flowers they have growing in their water-wise landscaping. This lily particularly caught my eye. I think this type is a Stella D'Oro daylily. Unfortunately the photo I took included a dead bloom in front of the right hand side of the flower. When I started the drawing, I chose not to include the dead bloom. It would've just looked like a blob and not added anything to the painting. But then I had to invent what the right hand side of the flower looked like! The stamens were the most challenging part of the painting, though - they got quite confusing to paint and in the end the angle that they went back into tube of the flower is not accurate. However, I am very pleased with how this came out overall.

As I mentioned with Painting 19, I am feeling very comfortable with the watercolors now. I think that since I'm no longer fighting with the paint, this will free me up a bit to concentrate on improving my backgrounds and compositions.