Assignment 11.Working from photographs, My Garden

The 'working from photographs' assignment required a floral painting suitable for a card design. I attempted a looser style of painting, which isn't really my thing and it felt a bit awkward and not very botanical. I found this to be a pretty awful assignment which wasn't anything to do with botanical art.

Above  detail from what turned out to be a more illustrative approach....this was a lot of work!

I decided to paint a corner of my garden working from a number of photographs taken this year - I would have liked to try something a bit more creative but the garden was handy and I was a bit short of time due to work, children and grandchildren.
The agapanthus was the obvious choice for a feature - there wasn't much left that looked half decent because high winds had flattened everything else! I made  lots of colour notes - the reproduction in the photographs is a little inaccurate so some care had to be taken. The painted lady butterfly was a regular visitor to both the agapanthus and the lavender and added a bit of interest. I  assembled the sketches and traced the whole image which was transferred to my watercolour paper (roughly A3 size). I took about 3 days from start to finish. Valerie Wright was my tutor for this assignment. I think this is the worst thing I've done so far....not my thing.

My Garden, not happy with that loose background but it'll have to do

Only one more assignment to go, then the Diploma Portfolio. It's just flown by in a fairly uneventful way so far, can't believe I'm nearly at the end of the assignments. Still no contact with tutors, just the sheets back, some give more feedback than others. I honestly don't think I've learned anything from this experience.