Autumn Hydrangeas, UART 320, 16″ x 20″

Underpainting, stage 1

Underpainting with alcohol

It’s been awhile since I posted.  Since doing my last 16 x 20 house painting from Maine, I’ve done six small paintings for December shows at two galleries. And I started teaching my classes this week.  But I was back in Massachusetts last week and got a few lovely shots from Sandwich on Cape Cod.  Decided to do this painting of hydrangeas, after having painted the June roses.

I loved the subtle color of the flowers, along with the green and orange roofs. And then, of course, the reflections of the flowers in the windows!  My original drawing left out the light post and the pot with flowers in lower left.  But when I was doing the painting, I decided it needed both, but I moved the lamp post to a spot I liked that would break up the hydrangeas.

I used violets, oranges and greens pretty much throughout the painting and in the shadows. But the blue of the sky is pretty intense and it needed to be reflected in the windows.

I did several color studies to figure out the colors of the hydrangeas. I began with a grayed orange from the Blue Earth set, then a very warm green, followed by some very light grayed whitish green and a little coral color.  The result was just what I wanted.

I also wanted a soft, more impressionistic look to the picture, which I probably didn’t get, but I decided to add some light orange to the lower part of the sky, which you can see above the orange rood.  I also left some of the yellow green underpainting show through in tiny pieces.

I hate doing shaddows on lawns!  I realized that as I was struggling with this last part of the painting!  But I loved painting the smaller building on the right and the bush in fronot of it.  The smaller details were fun in this painting.

Got my husband’s approval and wrapped it up in glassine, then unwrapped and reworked about five times!  Now I think I’m finally done.  I was originally planning to do this as a demo–what was I thinking???!!!