Farmer's Market Flowers, Hawaii Style

I've been away from my blog for too long. Here's my latest painting in progress:

It's a big one, 38x56". When it's finished, it's going to it's new home in Boston, MA. I promised myself I wouldn't paint any more large paintings unless they had a home, and fortunately, this one is a commission. I've begun the underpainting of the shadow shapes with winsor violet, pthalo turquoise, indigo, and napthamide maroon.

Here's a close-up of the right corner. I've started putting in some of the foliage with prussian blue, sap green, and yellowish green. The big yellow area is quinacridone gold. I've also masked some areas where I want to preserve highlights.

Here's the whole painting so far. I have most of the underpainting in place, but couldn't resist starting some of the local color. I can only deal with delayed gratification for so long!

I've painted the reds with an underpainting of quinacridone gold. This painting is so big that my normal method of tipping the paper to move the paint on the paper is a challenge. I've been working with a plastic garbage bag covered by a hand towel sitting on top of the painting with all my palettes, brushes & water bucket sitting on top of it. Every time I need to tip the paper, I've got to move all the stuff off the painting (carefully!) and then put it all back when I'm ready to paint again. 

This is it for today. I'll post more tomorrow!