Morning Shadows ~ morning glories

22x15 watercolor on 140 lb paper of white and variegated blue & white morning glories.  I took this photo reference while visiting at Lake Ransom Canyon with the morning sun making such interesting shadows especially on the white flower.  This flowering vine can be a pest in some countries growing and crowding other garden plants out but here we grow them for their beauty and lovely blue and purple hues.  I featured it during this month's plant parade challenge on WetCanvas where we focused on varieties of morning glories.
Image COPYRIGHT Kay Smith and is SOLD.

Morning Shadows - Finished Work

It is finally finished and was a long process for me, 22x15 in size, and was worth the step by step. I hope the viewers enjoyed watching this work in progress as much as I did.

Morning Glories Top Flowers Detail WIP

With this view I've provided you can see a detail of the variegated markings on top blue and white flowers. There's a mix of blues, magenta and violets within their coloration. Paints are Manganese blue, UB, Cobalt, and quinacridone magenta. I'm almost done with the painting.

WIP Morning Glories Top Flower

Work on the top glory is slow going, adding its variegated striping and checking values as I go along. To get the right blue hue am having to mix cobalt with the other two colors of UB and Manganese. Stay tuned!

Morning Glories WIP Variegated Bloom

Continuing on to the top morning glory to add its blue variegated striping using cobalt blue, UB, and Manganese. Another glaze done to bottom white one plus the leaf.

More Work on Morning Glories WIP demo

Shadows and glazes were added to the white flower for the multiformed ones seen through its transparent petals. I used UB, Copper Kettle, quin gold, quin magenta, manganese blue. The large leaf needs more darks as its value is too light.

WIP Blue & White Morning Glories

These images show progression of the background from start to finish done yesterday in watercolor, wet on dry paper. Darks have to be put in first for me to be able to get values correct from darkest dark to medium to light. I've added alizarin crimson and a bit of quinacridone magenta to warm it up as it is pretty cool temp wise with all the blues. As I go along I'm doing negative painting of some curled stems of the glory vines that were not present in the photograph.

Work in Progress: Blue & White Morning Glories

This bottom image shows you that I selected a blue and white morning glory photo taken at Lake Ransom Canyon. I turned the paper vertically then drew in pencil over the acrylic underpainting, but will paint in watercolor. The flowers will not be identical to the photo as I'm not doing photorealism, but fine art. Middle image shows top right background design; background will be very interesting with lots of shapes and other ephemera whereas flowers will be simple. They already have the underpainting to establish a varied pattern of cool blues and whites.