Weeds by the side of the road.

I thought they were weeds. Most helpful student, Marilyn discovered these are Minnesota wild flowers. I also learned Minnesota's new Highways for Habitat program aims to build native vegetation along roadsides. The new statewide program will significantly increase critical roadside habitat for pollinators, birds and wildlife. Not to mention, how visually the roadsides have become more interesting.

Here’s two photos I captured; Purple Milkwort in the landscape and in a still life arrangement with thistles. Painting backgrounds has been challenging for some of the students. So I’m using these images as an opportunity to demonstrate a couple techniques.

Starting with the flowers in the wild photo, I wet the area that will be the sky, mixed colbalt blue with a touch of burnt
sienna (to grey it down, aka desaturate, the blue) dropped it in wet on wet.I waited for that to dry. Then I wet the whole sheet and swirled in winsor violet, sap green and indanthrone blue. Note, did mix in a little red iron oxide with the sap green.

While everything was slightly damp I sprinkled salt on the left side only.

Waited until everything was completely dry. Brushed off all salt. Painting wet on dry paper, I added
a layer of darker green to shadow areas of grass. Let it dry. Began to brush in a few stems with my rigger brush. Using colbalt violet I also started to develop the purple flowers. Did mix a little white gouache into the violet on the flower heads in lower left corner.

Another way to do a background, this time a smoother all over color. Honestly, this didn’t go as planned. I wanted more of a gradient wash. Dark to light. When it was still damp, I blotted out the flower areas with a dry kleenex. After letting everything dry I began to define the stems, using a rigger brush, and the purple flower heads with colbalt violet and indanthrone blue for shadow sides.

After the my demos students did a warm up exercise painting gradient washes. I know it helps me to do something loose before I start a painting.

And here’s some of student’s paintings. I love seeing all the variations on the theme.The third painting in the bottom row is from a student who painted from her own photo of different weedy flowers. Beautiful!