Painting Flowers with Watercolors

What I am saying is that, as an artist, nothing could be further than the truth. It's hard work to pry one's self away from the waiting dirty laundry, or the vacuum cleaner, to formulize the ideas dancing in my head, transfer said idea to paper or canvas by ink pen or brush, create a pleasing end product and consider it worthwhile art.

Most times it's very difficult to leave the errands of daily life to carve out time for creative work. How many times have I said to myself, "Today I am going to my art space to do some work", only to find a few errant socks that dislodged themselves from my laundry pile on the way to the washing machine. Well, that could be the distraction that takes me to unexpected territory once more! Foiled again by lurking laundry!

Walking through my house on the way to the kitchen this one day, I glanced out my living room window and spied the flower beds. Something about the way the flowers looked in the sunlight called to me.

The golden yellow Rudebekia and pink Echinacea in the beds of the flower garden were glistening in the sun. A breeze must have caught the petals and the tall stems swayed. I guess that's what caught my eye.

I just decided that other things will just have to wait. The time was now and I was not going to miss the opportunity of some time painting in nature..

Taking a chair from the other side of the yard, I sat amidst these and other flowers with paints and brushes. Watercolor was the perfect medium to record the vibrancy of the scene for it's fluidity and quick application.

I began by lightly sketching the stems and petals with a pencil.

Totally in the present moment, feeling the sun's warmth, moving the pencil across the paper, seeing the brightness and the shadows play on the fragrant flowers, all the senses were working simultaneously.

As I drew I could feel myself slipping away to a far away place. Nothing mattered except what I was doing.

Satisfied with my composition on the paper, I moved on to color! I dipped my brush into the clear water and decided which color to begin with for the real fun.

I mixed some ultramarine blue with forest green and sketched in some shadows. I dipped into the mixture again, applying the gorgeous color to the watercolor paper and molded the shapes for the highlights to come.

As I worked I imagined how the impressionist, Claude Monet, must have felt as he painted the water lilies, pond and bridge in his garden in Giverney, France. Monet painted that scene many times, in every possible time of the day for various effects of color, different shadows and highlights that might play on the surfaces of his subjects.

All outside distractions were far away. In this dreamlike state, I could be anywhere in the world at that moment. Nothing mattered but the tall, color drenched flowers and the way my brush described the scene around me on the paper. Bliss!

A butterfly fluttered onto one of the black-eyed daisies as I painted and she became a part of it too.

Near my painting spot is a birdbath and a couple of birds came to take a dip and sip the water.The flowers I was painting were so tall that, as I sat low in my chair, I was eye level to flowers, and the birds paid no notice to me.

Yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, cadmium red and orange described the petals of the flowers perfectly. I traced the lines of my pencil work with the strokes of the color loaded brush.

Somehow I felt the brush was moving on its own, driven by my eyes as I watched the colors of the flowers. It was as if there was no hand attached to an arm, attached to my body working from my brain. A kind of beautiful detachment.

The colors flowed, the shapes emerged, and the day progressed magically, perfectly.

I forgot all about the laundry.