Japanese Magnolias

I love to paint Magnolias. This is the first painting of Japanese Magnolias that I have done. In front of my mother's home she had a Japanese Magnolia tree. Every year it was a question of how they would bloom. My parent's lived in New York and often there was a frost in the spring which would effect the bloom in a negative way. One year there was even the question as to whether the tree would survive. But more often than not it would bloom and it was magnificent. The gentle, delicate flowers would grace the arms of the tree.

I painted this painting on Masa paper. I first layed in multiple pale colors. I then drew the outline of the flowers in. Then I negative painted the painting. I put my colors in surrounding the shapes of the flowers to be. After that I went into the flowers and added values to make them more three dimensional. Then I looked at the painting and saw that the background was not dark enough so I layed in another layer of color.

This is a fun way to paint. When you do negative painting your subject(s) jump right out at you. It is fascinating to see it happening before your eyes.