Monday, August 9, 2010

Dahlia



This is for August 2010 Rookie Painter challenge - Dahlia. It's oil on 9x12 canvas board. (ref photo)

Similar to the yellow tulips I did for this challenge, I decided to use a darker background for the sunlit flower in order to accentuate the glowing nature of the flower. The sun lit area is painted with cold color - mostly lemon yellow. The rest of the flower is painted with warmer colors - naple yellow, permanent rose, radiant red, cadmium red, orange, cobalt violet, madder, alizarin and ultramarine violet. The work is tedious as I had to paint petal by petal. The background is viridian green mixed with ultramarine violet, although it's so dark it appears black in the photo.

2 comments:

  1. Rebecca - your work on this is wonderful. LOVE the details, and the darker background is perfect. I can tell you put a great deal of work into this, but it was well worth it. It's beautiful.

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  2. Very striking and lovely! Well beyond "rookie". Very nice.

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