Bougainvillea Mexicana

Here is it.  Can you believe it?  I actually did something I said I was going to do.  This is the watercolor version of the bougainvillea silk painting that I did last week.  Many times I say I'm going to do this painting or that painting and they never get posted.  That's because they never get painted.  I guess I have more ideas of what to paint than the motivation to paint them.  I get easily distracted by new ideas and the old ones just get forgotten.  I should probably write them down for those times that I can't think of anything to paint.

This is a large painting and I really had to work hard to finish it for today.  I fought with the paper the whole time.  It is on Arches 300# rough.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I chose that paper for a floral.  Maybe because the wall was stucco I thought it would be a good choice.  I drew this and painted the background quite some time ago so I don't really remember my thought process.  Also, though I love the heavier papers, it is really hard to get some of the color mixtures and effects that I want.  I was hoping to paint the shadows with a looser, more watery feeling but didn't think I could get that with the heavier paper.  The edges were drying creepy (I mean creepy crawly, not creepy scary, even though it's Halloween)  instead of blurry like I wanted.   Also, when I floated the colors blends on the paper they looked beautiful but because the paper took so long to dry, the paints blended together too much and lost the effect that they had when they were wet so I was unhappy with that aspect of the painting too.  I had to do a lot more glazes to get the effect I wanted. That seems to happen on the 300# cold press paper too but the Arches 300# hot press seems very different in how it accepts the paint and is one of my favorite papers which is weird because I hate their 140# hot press.  That paper is very hard for me to work on because I like my paints to blend smoothly and that doesn't happen easily on the lighter weight hot press.  Maybe if I didn't wear my glasses while I paint I would relax and not worry about things like that because they would look blended.  : )

Anyway, enough about paper.  I'm sure those of you that aren't artists are yawning by now.  I'm really pretty happy with this painting even though I was cursing at it while I was working on it.  Maybe that helped.  I'm not sure what I'll paint next but it won't be flowers.  As much as I like them, I'm sick of them for now, especially pink flowers!

Bougainvillea Mexicana
Image size 22" x 30"
Watercolor