After finishing my summer school course with Ella Clocksin, I have tried to keep up a bit of momentum with abstract watercolouring. One of the subjects I have been exploring has been the Echinacea flowers in the back garden – glorious bursts of colour and form. I was quite pleased with my early drawings but rather spoiled them when I put the paint on. Too much colouring in and not enough freedom. I’ve pressed on though and have got to this:

The main piece is in the bottom right but I have also included some of the sketches that helped in the development. On the right, I started by just testing my oranges in broad strokes but, when that was dry, I tried blobs of green and then lifting out pigment with a fine brush to capture the spikes of the coneflower’s centre. At the top, I was experimenting with the petals; again, broad strokes and then lifting out colour with a wide and then a fine brush. Both of those combine in the final sketch, which is quite a few steps from realism but captures some of the vivid energy and contrast of these beautiful flowers.

I also rather like the arrangement of the three images along with some of my watercolour tubes (sorry Ella, cheap as chips pigments and old postcards to paint on, although the pink is one of the last remnants I kept on my palette from the course). I will count this towards my 52photos set – photographed with the iPad Pro.