Daffodils and Willow Pattern, Oil on Panel, 9.5 x 7 inches
I’m beggining to realise that I’ve fallen in love with painting daffodils.
It’s partly because they’re such a challenge to paint. Keeping the chroma high and trying to show all the nuances of hue, all the slightly differing yellows, painting the form of each individual flower – all of these things would be quite difficult for me on their own.
Doing them all at once is a real challenge. I feel it’s stretching me.
It’s also because their colours are so, so beautiful.
Spending a large part of each day in the company of these singing yellows is an experience in itself. There’s something unashamedly optimistic about the way they spread themselves to the light, apparently unconcerned by their own fragility and ephemerality.
And the more daffodil paintings I do, the more I’m remembering the value of working in a series.
It’s something I used to do a lot years ago, but had largely forgotten about.
By coming back again and again to my daffodils, I’m finding new aspects of the colour each time.
I’m getting to try different ways to cope with the challenges of painting high chroma yellows, and exploring a delicate balance between creating believable flowers and simplifying the shapes – perhaps beyond what I would usually do.
Some of this is very conscious and carefully and methodically approached, the colour particularly. Some, I think, happens almost without me being fully aware of it.
I’ve long thought that simplifying forms and reducing detail might create a stronger feeling of the reality of the subject in the painting, a kind of physical there-ness that detail doesn’t give.
Perhaps it’s because I’m trying to pull back my focus and constantly address the picture as a whole rather than a single element at a time. Compressing the values in the lights is requiring me to do that, I have to in order to keep the value balacnce consistent.
Whatever it is, I’m finding myself in new (for me) and exciting territory at the easel, and I can’t wait to get into the studio and begin work at the moment – to the detriment of many other parts of my life!
I read a quote recently which I can’t rememeber the source for but keep returning to, it went something like “Your last painting will show you what your next painting needs to be”.
That’s certainly happening with me and daffodils at the moment. As each one is completed, I’m immediately itching to start the next one, to see what will happen when I approach them from a slightly different angle, try to do one aspect better.
So I suppose this means that there will be more daffodil paintings to come.
The garden is now full of them. Every time I walk out of the front door I’m assailed by them, drawing my attention and daring me to try again.
Best wishes,
Paul
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Dear Paul
Firstly this is an exquisite painting.
I like to do series..they grow one from the other and change in the process.Sometimes seeking excellence in the image and sometimes seeking something else more elusive .
Recently I painted a series of lemons..it started a a bunch of lemons fresh from my friends garden thrown onto a white cloth on a wooden chest
.voila..there was Cezanne.
Then I wanted to explore those images into some sort of abstraction.I was obsessed.The abstraction could be by defraction of detail or by reduction of detail.In the end there were 11 paintings in the series..and there are two more in my head .
You can see them in my website if you like.
Thanks for your blog .I love reading it and looking at your fine paintings andhave learnt so much from you.
Nicole Levy
Thank you Nicole. Ah, I found them yes – wonderful to see how they changed. It looks like you repainted exactly the same subject, too, as if each painting is really a reinvention of the last?
Paint those other two 🙂
Wow, you really had a different approach to that lemon series- almost like several different painters had had a go! I hadn’t thought of painting a series where the subject remains the same and the style changes so much. I usually vary only very few aspects from one painting to another. I think I might try stepping back a bit! Thanks for sharing
You are doing an amazing work, in your “discovered” series of the daffodils. You captured them well! Can’t wait to see the next painting. We will have these beautiful flowers soon, here in Ohio.
Thank you Joellyn! Will you be painting some when they arrive?
Paul, Thank you for all your daffodil paintings. I used your color palette last spring to paint my first daffodils, and couldn’t wait for them to be out this year. Struggling with my current daffodil painting now, but already planning the next. If only I didn’t have to work in between sessions at my easel! I always look forward to your emails and your beautiful paintings.
Thank you Ann!
If you’re having difficulties (and believe me, I know how that feels!) I would try looking first at the values. Try to paint the flowers themselves in a very narrow value range from light to shadow. Every time I let the shadows go too low in value, I lose the fresh feeling of htem and have to correct it.
Do you have the Munsell student book by any chance?
Superb Daffodil paintings Paul, really beautiful, whenever I’ve had a go at them I’ve struggled with tone and, as you pointed out, getting enough darks in the shadow areas of such a high key subject. I’ll learn from you so thanks for these posts
Nigel
I love this painting, Paul, it’s really beautiful!