This was really the first original watercolour I did, during a 2 month watercolour course my Mom enrolled me in (1989). I have not received formal training since then, although I have read books on the matter. The flowers were painted from imagination in about an hour. I remember squeezing the paint on the palette and asking the professor if I needed to add water to it? In retrospect this is the most basic thing about watercolours, you add water to them! What got me hooked was the bright colour, and the fact that you could push paint around a blank piece of paper and come up with an image that looked like something. I'll post some more early works as we go.
The early palette was very simple, I only used aureolin (pale yellow), alizarin crimson (dark red), french ultramarine (dark blue) and burnt sienna (warm brown). Working with these colours I established a lot of the mixtures I still use today. The greens in the flower painting are made by mixing the blue and the yellow, the more grey leaves in the main stem are blended with a bit of red. One flower is cool red (which contains some french ultramarine blue) and the other is a warm red, no doubt mixed with the aureolin yellow. The background contains some out-of-focus leaves which helps give depth to the picture. It is initialed PD with 89 in a circle in think black ink pen, a practice I stopped shortly after in favour of the 'scrawl' signature using light blue paint.
Two Red Flowers, 12 x 9", watercolour paper. 1989 (No. 0084)
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