I never thought a two-day sketch of daffodils could be so hard to paint. It was interesting the first day, frustrating the second, really frustrating the third, and after the fourth I was ready to give up. But on the fifth it finally started looking a bit better, and today, it's okay. What took the longest was nailing down the basic colors. I've never done much work with whites except clouds. Lavender was the first tint I tried for the un-highlighted areas on the white petals, and that wasn't awful but it wasn't pretty. Then I tried gray-greens, and blues—I've always loved blues and yellow together, but not this time—before finally settling on an almost teal, which went well with both the yellows and the greens.
The other big problem was that the photo reference was strongly backlit, and I couldn't make that work in two days of trying so I gave up and faked more normal lighting. Once I got that far, it finally got to be fun. Now that I'm ready to call it done I'm thinking how I could have done it better—but that's a major point of sketching—get the first one out of the way, and stop thinking about it. Just get the experience under your belt.
But I did really get a good education in yellows and ruffled edges, and I only rarely work in yellow or orange. I invoked the artist's privilege to outline the coronas in purple; that was anti-realistic and fun. Sometimes I just want to find out what I can get away with—it's good practice drawing with the brush, and 100% approved for sketching. That's still how my mind works, unfortunately—Is this okay? Is it allowed? I sure hope I can get to a point where I can stop worrying about that. The only things that matter are how the painting looks, and what lessons did I get from this one?
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