Azalia

This is a small watercolor demo for my Wednesday morning class. It was a lesson in simplicity, color mixing on the paper, and negative painting.

As always, I painted the lightest, brightest color first - just laying in the pink shape with a wash of quinacridone rose and cobalt violet. While that was still wet, I dropped in some quinacridone red and a little ultramarine and manganese blue. When that was dry in most places I painted in the green, letting it only bleed with the pink in the lower left area of the flowers. I didn't want all hard edges, but I didn't want the red and green to mix too much - they are opposites on the color wheel and we would end up with drab colors.

It felt good to be painting with the class again. They all did a beautiful job with these flowers. I did have to yell "Don't touch that" a few times. They were doing well and didn't want to stop.

I need to find some primrose now. I haven't seen any yet in the stores - I will look at the greenhouse. They should be available now, shouldn't they?