Lily

Today I got a chance to test out a few flower painting theories, and continued further testing some oil painting paper. The goal was to do the regular oil painting thing. Start with the darker tones of the flower - In this case, the muted greens of the interior of the flower - before layering the lights on top of them. This is supposed to be common sense for me, after 15 years of painting, but when flowers often sit at the lighter end of the value scale, I often forget that the dark-to-light methodology should still be observed, and I muddy everything up rather quickly with uncontrolled values trying to model the flower. With the intent to follow a dark-to-light application process, today‘s sketch went pretty well. I’m pretty happy - it’s nice when a few weeks worth of studying and testing provides some modest results. This looks like a lily (I think). It looks like it was well observed and effeciently executed in a bravura manner. I think I’ll be trying a few more test sketches in the studio and then attempt one outdoors.

-ZR