Blackberry Blossom

"Backlighting gave these flowers a dramatic look which was an inspiration for painting them from my reference photo. In reality blackberry blossoms are a bit pink before they open, becoming mostly white when fully in bloom. I thought my painting would be more interesting if I captured the values with a rainbow of brilliant colors instead.

I applied masking fluid to preserved the white areas as unpainted white paper, then repeatedly poured dilutions of three primary colors. This techniques allows random mixing of the colors, resulting in beautiful mixed tones across the paper. I used these pourings to create a mid-range value throughout the painting. Once dry, I removed the masking fluid to reveal my lightest value, white. Then I continued to paint with the same three colors I had poured, now carefully creating a wide range of light to dark values in the flowers, foliage and the background. I tried to add these values with the same colors that the initial pouring created: for example, in the leaf on the top left I used the medium blue tone which was on most of that area from the pouring and mixed darker shades of blue for the veins, then I gradually shifted to green tones then purple as I painted veins in the parts of the leaf which had those mid-range colors.

The darkest background color surrounds the blossoms, to make them the focal point, while I darkened the rest of the background while maintaining some of the gorgeous original colors."

Blackberry Blossom critique by Kimberly Winkle
"I was drawn to this piece by contrast mark-making between foreground and background. Even though the artist used very saturated colors in both back and foreground -- which could camouflage that sense of space -- the way that they obscured the background in this loose field of color without shapes helps separate background from foreground. We have much more definition in the foreground. We can see individual petals. We start to see petals wrapped tightly to create the buds, we see the interior of flowers, veining of leaves. Mark-making is used to create this area of emphasis. Preserving white helps define the flowers as a focal point."