Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do… and what beautiful and interesting answers we have had for this painting project too! Enjoy!
From Marion: It’s not a mess, it’s captured the sense of enthusiasm that daisies have, growing where and how they will (unless you’ve a formal garden with rigid planting) and dancing about under the sun.
From Marion: Beautiful rich greens, with sense of depth, movement, and the cheerfulness that I associate with daisies.
From Marion: I’m looking at this and wondering why I’ve never thought to combine pencil and masking fluid, because it totally resolves the hard-edged look of masking fluid white areas that I don’t really like. I do, however, keep wanting to straighten up your painting!
From Marion: Do I detect the influence of the “cut up” from May’s project…? After a bit of pondering I’ve realised that I keep wanting these flowers to be water lilies rather than daisies, but can’t decide whether it’s because the cutout shapes feel like waterlily leaves or it’s the sense of pond in the background.
From Marion: I’m intrigued by how the blue background at the top could feel so airy whilst the green and the bottom feels like I’m looking down at the ground, yet both are merely a single colour; how my brain adds and interprets.
From Marion: I like the energy, colours, variety of angles. Looking at the lower left, there’s yellow peaking out beind the green, giving a sense of sunshine and depth. I know layering is one of my enthusiasms, but it’s tiny bits like this that show how effective it can be.
From Marion: That your fingers are leading you to daisies is making me smile! There’s a lovely looseness to this, interesting mark making with an energy and freshness. You might try this approach using an acrylic marker pen and then watery acrylics around it.
From Marion: “I did a little happy dance seeing these, that joyful feeling that comes from nudging someone in a direction and seeing them run with the idea. Both have a lot I like about them: the looseness, the balance of suggestion and representation, the feel of the ‘hand of the artist’.
From Marion: Theoretically we should be able to do a larger painting with the vitality of a sketchbook pieces, because the evidence is right there that we can work in this style. The key is to somehow break the “this is now a serious painting” mindset that overrides the looseness. One thing that may help is to do the bigger version on paper still, not canvas.
From Marion: The white where the tape was makes it feel like I’m looking through a window (I’ve a whole book of paintings by Matisse with just his views through windows). You’re absolutely right to leave it loose like this, it’s got such sense of movement, of swaying in the breeze.
From Marion: When you showed me the photo of your painting whilst it was still a work-in-progress, I’d wondered what you might do with the ‘gap’ between the two sections, but didn’t point it out as I wanted to see if you’d resolve it. This is the perfect solution.
And one from June’s bluebells project:
I’ve had fun with daisies myself this month, starting with my concertina book daisies (see this blog post for a video):
Which led to this painting on canvas:
And this mixed media painting on paper:
As always with painting projects, if you’d like to share a photo of your painting(s), please email it to me, send it via social media, or post to the community section of my Patreon. There’s no deadline on any of the projects, I will simply include it in the next photo gallery.
Happy painting!