Campsis after Rain

For the circumstances regarding this flower with raindrops, see previous post.
I'm going a little deeper into my method here. The first image is a photograph of the flowers reduced to 16 colours in Paint Shop Pro, with a 10 x 8 grid imposed (my support will be a 10 x 8 in. piece of Pastelmat).

Now you can use the colour palette in Paint Shop to make a swatch, so that the underpainting is reduced in complexity of colour although the tonal range is not altered.

I used this as basic palette to to the first sketch.

Followed by a bit of quick blending.

I usually select a subset of soft pastels to cover all potential colours and values in a painting. This is the selection, and the "nuancier". It includes Rembrandts (top left), Artisan Pastellier, Blue Earth yellows, some Schminke, and Senneliers, bottom rows.

I chose to give a pink bias to the top flower, and once done put in some background to see view the contrast. I used Sennelier dark green 177.

I decided to exaggerate the orange-yellow tints of the bottom flower.

Back to the top right, and the pinkish flowers, finish background, and sign. Job done!

Campsis after Rain © Niall O'Neill

Hibiscus after Rain

After two weeks of unremitting heat in early July, the temperature dropped from 39-40 degrees Celsius and it rained - just for a day - on July 26th. So I took some pictures of this Hibiscus Blue Bird (and a Campsis or Trumpet flower) and decided to paint it.
The first picture shows the support, some scribbled petals, and a colour chart of the few pastels used to get me to this point - CarbOthello in the main.

The pencils are fine for initial drawing, but not for painting, with the exception of the stigmas and pistil in the flower's centre. After checking all my blues, I decided on Sennelier 334, 335 and 336 as being the most suitable for colour and for a subtle movement of tone within the hue.

The dark centre was put in using Unison, and all the raindrops were outlined. The centre was enhanced with some subtle touches of very dark red from Roché. Once the petals were near completion I put in some Sennelier 434 dark blue to see how the background would show up the bloom.

It only remained to finish the leaves - not too much detail needed here -  finish the background, and sign! The finished piece is on Pastelmat, 10 x 8 ins or 25 x 20 cms.

Hibiscus after Rain © Niall O'Neill