Lagerstroemia speciosa, Jarul, the state flower of
Maharashtra, in watercolor
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| Final retouched |
I kept seeing these beautiful, pinkish mauve colored flowers
near the Westin hotel lane, behind Oberoi mall, every summer, and I wonder if I
should take up the challenge to put the brush on it!
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| Reference photo |
And I did so this summer, only to learn many lessons of
watercolor … my learning continues.
First of all, I did not find any reference paintings of this
flower, except for one or two in acrylic. But photographs many I found on the
internet. But to understand the flower in 3D one should photograph it
personally. So I photographed many bunches from the many trees on the above
said road. Each tree had a different shade of mauve, from purple to a dull grayish
mauve. I even cut a small bunch and carried in a water bottle to refer, and
picked fallen flowers to take home to do a study, but alas by the time I
reached home close by, they had become limp. So couple of more rounds to be
around with the trees and the blooms and observe them closely and photograph
them. Might have taken more than 50 shots, unmindful of the glares of passer bys,
and discarded 40 of them.
Next, I did a sketch and found myself rubbing a lot. It
struck me that the paper will lose its strength, so I did the drawing on a
sketch pad and used a tracing paper to put it on the actual paper. And it is
not so simple as said so. I researched on this too, and I had to turn the
tracing paper into a graphite paper by rubbing its back with A4 lead pencil.
Did a trial on a small sketch pad and then transferred it to the paper for
coloring, Again I had to darken the lines and rub off the powdered graphite
lightly. So that the graphite does not mudden the delicate pinkish hue and retain
a good transparency and purity.
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| Couple of washes and putting all the colors |
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| Final one, showing test strip at the side |
I did sample flowers on a strip of the same paper. To try
the technique and the hues. Technique was wet on dry and another was wet on
wet. I was not getting the correct color though. I used mixes of ultramarine
blue, cobalt with alizarin crimson, madder red, opera rose. I got new tubes of
Camlin Mauve and violet. Ultimately it was Camelin purple which matched well
satisfactorily. One more exercise I did was not matched it with images on the
phone due to the screen guard I use. I copied it to my computer and magnified
it. Used a dropper from MS paintbrush to check each shade of pink in sunlight
and in the shade, from one side of the branch to the other tip.
And so I started, after doing the first purple flower on the
stem, wet on dry, I was not happy and washed off the sheet. Again I tried
different technique offline to show the curliness and the shadows effectively.
Finally it was wet on wet. The base had a wash of little of Aquarelle yellow +
opera Rose (pure pink) than layers of pink, purple and mauve, violet and
ultramarine in the shadows. This flower is very similar to “crepe myrtle” the
difference being the leaves. So I put in two leaves in the corner. The buds had
a tinge of mauve mixed with the green which gave a matching green. The calyx
are very prominent and had a range from pink to greenish cream to the whirl to
stop losing it I put in the darker color around it. And now the background. I wanted a middle tone
for it, but it was ineffective. Again to the market and got a bottle of masking
fluid. I covered the borders of the flower, and matched the background to the
dark color around the calyx (sepal). So it became dark, But, alas My brush gave
up. It started showing marks on the wash. I mixed a well of blue ,green and
purple twice to do the wash, but third one I did mixed the colors on my brush
and completed it.
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| First trial wash |
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| The wash went out of control on the other side |
The icing was the little honey bee which I had left blank,
which came up well with a dab of yellow and mix of dark grey. And delightfully
I publish to you all. Thanks for reading through this all!!
To connect with me go to my home page Home
P.S.: I changed the final painting again, the branch running behind the flowers seemed lost on the left side, so lifted off the top coat to reveal it. See the difference from "Final one, showing test strip at the side" to the one at the start of the page.
