It's Not A Cat!

That's what he said when I first showed him this painting.

#167 - Peony In Yard - 8" x 8" - paper - alternative blue

This one was painted both from looking at the original photo (below, which was cropped) and a version of the photo in my beloved app, Notanizer. I'm not sure that I would have painted the darkest parts of the flower dark enough if it wasn't for the app. When you look at the flower in 4-values with this app, the darkest parts of the flower are black. My eyes / brain still want to stay, but wait! I know it's a dark value, but how can it be that dark when the native color is white. Actually, that's not 100% true. I'm finally starting to get it, but it's taken a long time and I suspect that I will continue to struggle with this. It made me think about the donut painting from painting class last fall and the follow-up donut painting. While I may not be the quickest at picking up on these concepts, I don't give up either. 

I think my lightest colors in the flower and the darkest ones are pretty good. The middle values could probably use some more distinction between them. I've wanted to try and paint from this picture for some time, but didn't know how to approach it. I knew that I didn't want to try and paint every petal, so I wasn't sure what to do. What I decided was to try a mix of going with the shapes and going for the feeling of the petals. 

For a person who loves bright, bright colors, it always surprises me how much I enjoy painting different types of white. When I looked at the picture, there were yellowy whites, gray whites and pink whites. 

I did this in one sitting, yesterday. It went fairly quickly. I'm still getting over my cold, so the analytical part of my brain was too tired to get in the way. That made doing the background easier. For a change, I didn't over-think it.