Yellow Rose
Number five of the ten flower paintings, half way through the series.
Although this painting didn't come out so well, it was an interesting one to work on. I had the same problem as with the Gerbana, in that I couldn't quite get the colour right. It's funny, because I picked this rose to paint thinking that it wouldn't present me with any problems. The Michael Harding cadmium yellow is very intense, I was sure I could catch this yellow. But the old problem returned.
I could either get the colour the right tone, in which case I lost the intensity of the yellow by adding too much white, or I could get the intensity of the colour, with pure cad yellow, but then the tone was darker. With the Gerbana I decided to live with my painting coming out slightly darker in tone than the actual flower, and the painting came out ok. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I didn't do that with this one. Perhaps because I thought I should have been able to match the colours AND the tones on this rose. I couldn't. In real life, the rose was fairly glowing with light. Mine looks dead by comparison.
Because I was finding it difficult to match the colour, I struggled with this one and I think it shows. Towards the end of the painting, I kept standing back and thinking I didn't have enough intensity to the colour, so I added more pure yellow. Then I would stand back again, and think the rose had become too dark, and add more white. The result was that the rose became overworked and lost it's freshness and vitality. Overworking a painting is never good, but it seems to be particularly destructive when painting flowers. The leaves, which came out fine on the first hit, work much better. The bluish green of the leaves in full light was easier to match than the yellow, and I could get the warm yellowish reflected green on the leaves in shadow with a yellowish green glaze.
This business about having to compromise between colour and tone is becoming more and more of an issue for me. I do believe I'll crack it, but I think I'll need to concentrate on it for a while before I do. It's not because of mixing, because I used pure cadmium yellow (with some white of course) for this rose. What I'm getting at is that it wasn't that I couldn't mix the colour I needed, like when I was going for an intense magenta on the orchid, I just don't seem to be able to get the intensity of hue and the tone at the same time. There must be a way.
I'm planning to paint this rose again tomorrow, in slightly weaker light (i.e. with the rose placed further from the window,) and see if that makes a difference. Also, I'm going to try to ignore the drawing of the form as much as I can and concentrate on the colour notes more. I'm considering doing three small, quicker sketches of the rose tomorrow, one with a light background, one with a mid-tone and one with a dark background, just to see how it affects the colour. If this rose wilts too much before tomorrow morning, I've got some chrysanthemums of a very similar colour I can play with instead. We'll see what happens.
back to paintings