Creative garden
INGRID SANCHEZ ,AKA CREATIVEINGRID, paints this garden scene, featuring blooms and bleeds, in mixed media
Tand grounding than plants, and I have felt an attraction to them ever since I can remember. As a child, I spent endless hours playing in my family garden. I loved to plant, move earth and create magic formulas in my head to make my plants bigger and prettier.
It is not a surprise that when I started painting, one of my rst artworks was inspired by this garden. I called it Dad’s Garden, and it was the rst of many paintings to be inspired by plants.
Now that I have a garden of my own, I created an outside studio to teach workshops and share my love for watercolour and botanicals with my students. Sometimes we try an exercise that I call the Creative Garden, inspired by the plants that are in bloom in my garden. But the trick is to observe, study and paint them by memory.
As the plants, light and seasons change, the nal pieces are always dierent and that is the point. The artworks will always be the result of the interpretation, imagination and memory of the artist that paints them.
This is a relatively fast wet-on-wet technique where the brush jumps from very translucent to saturated paint. Everything bleeds to generate movement and capture the essence of my subject. For this painting, I have chosen the liliums as a focal point. ▸
1 BE PREPARED
When working with this technique, it is essential to have all the supplies prepared and to hand. I want to generate juicy bleedings, so I must work fast and focus on the process rather than looking for supplies. Once I have established that my focal point will be my liliums, I can start creating my palette and paint a very quick study to help me test how the colours bleed and the composition.
2 USE COLOURED WATER
To help me move the pigments while generating transparencies, I like to use water with some colour in it. For my liliums, I mix Vermilion and Pyrrole Orange in equal parts with a dash of Ultramarine Blue in a small jar with water. For additional owers and leaves, I do the same in a dierent jar using only Lemon Yellow. In a palette, I squeeze the same colours plus Sap Green and Alizarin Crimson.
3 ADD STEMS AND LEAVES
Using the round brush no.8, I start painting the silhouettes of my liliums. For this, I use the mix of pink colourful water alternating with more saturation from a mix of paint from the palette. Using a mix of Sap Green and the yellow water, I start adding stems and leaves straight away. Allowing the dierent elements to touch each other, will create beautiful colour bleedings and gradations.
4 WORK WITH THE DAMPNESS IN THE PAPER
Smaller owers join the composition with a very delicate mix of yellow and pink water. All the elements in my watercolour are wet and very translucid, and even though they are separate owers, I want them to blend with the rst leaves and stems. Taking advantage of the dampness in the paper, I go back to the head of my liliums and with a knife, I shave a watercolour pencil to create some texture. ▸
5 MIX COLOURS AS YOU GO
To add contrast I start working with the paint on my palette. I use the tip of my brush, dipping it into various mixtures of yellow, orange and Alizarin Crimson. I like mixing my colours as I go, sometimes directly on the paper to see how new colours and gradations appear like magic.
I keep using my colourful water, more saturation doesn’t mean dry paint, and it is important that all remains wet.
6 CONNECT THE SMALL FLOWERS
With a watery mix of Ultramarine Blue and Vermilion mixed on my palette, I start painting smaller leaves and stems. During this process, I alternate the saturation in my brush from blue to Vermillion, so I get a wide range of leaves that go from intense blue and purple. I want to connect all the small owers with stems, so with my round brush no.4 I paint lines resembling foliage.
7 NOW FOR CLEAN WATER
To paint a magical spell in the form of a splatter, I dip my no.8 round brush in the blue watery mix and let it drip over the paper, I repeat the process with the pink mix. Using clean water, I paint more leaves, allowing them to touch the blue drops. They are so translucid we can see the white of the paper, but I let it bleed with the colour of the drops.
8 MAINTAIN THE LOOSE STYLE OF PAINTING
Liliums have very characteristic freckles, anthers, laments and a pistil that give them their distinctive personality. I want to maintain the loose style of my painting, so I want these details to be very discreet. For this, I use my no.4 round brush and the original mix of pink water to paint the freckles, laments and anthers. For the pistil, I use the yellow water and drop some yellow into the laments.
9 FINALISE WITH A TOUCH OF SWIRLS
Using a mix of Primary Yellow, Cadmium Red and Titanium White acrylic and the no.8 lbert brush, I create an additional layer of botanical motifs. I dip my brush directly into the acrylic and paint petals alternating from one colour to another. I don’t wash my brush between brushstrokes, I prefer to see how the colours mix with each ower. I nalise with a touch of swirls and lines resembling leaves. ▫