My orchids are in bloom and I just had to capture them before the blooms faded. I had purchased some 8"x8" gallery wrapped canvases and my plan was to paint each one in oil, in a botanical style. So I began by base coating each canvas with a beige tinted gesso and added various greens (sap green, phaylo green, chromium) in blended streaks. But I wanted each background to be different. Next step....the sketch. That's where things changed......
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| Iwanagara - Apple Blossom "Fangtastic" |
I began a basic conture sketch on vellum using a 2H graphite pencil (my favorite for laying in light lines that can be easily erased). Things were going well the lines would be easy to transfer and I liked the proportions to the square canvas when I smeared the graphite with my hand. That's easy to do on vellum and I hadn't bothered to use a protective sheet of paper (oh well, it's only a sketch). I began to erase the smear and loved the highlight it created. So I began to smear and highlight more when I discovered I was adding more and more detail. Since I had used good vellum this miraculously turned into a detailed gray scale work of my orchid.
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