White Hydrangeas

"White Hydrangeas"

24x20

This is my latest studio still life piece done from life. When I work from live flowers on a painting that is larger than 16x20 I am pushing myself to get the canvas covered as quickly and accurately as possible before they die. Especially hydrangeas and lilacs, they're cut time is only a day or two. This painting holds some of my favorite things to paint, reflections and white flowers. I like the hydrangeas in their early stage when they are still white. It was a goal of mine this year to get them before they turned colors. I love lighting up hydrangeas, they radiate such an internal glow, I love that!

My idea for this painting was to have the colors be rich and more on the warm side of the scale. It's easy with whites for me to make everything too cool since the shadows of white read very cool to me. I used the dark background to help set off the light valued flower heads.

An added thought. I've started painting my larger still life pieces using a stretched linen and I'm really liking the paint quality I'm getting versus the mounted hard panels. I've been struggling with my surfaces lately but the stretched is taking the paint better for still life work. . . hmmm.. .