Naomi Dickins has submitted her fifth assignment for the Botanical Painting Art course and we have added her beautiful paintings below. Such delicate artwork, we are sure you will be as impressed as we are! Naomi said….
I have submitted three paintings because I felt that, during the process of this assignment, I gained confidence and made some real progress in my understanding of technique. The series of paintings represents that process. Mainly, I now feel that I have more control over the paint (and am less afraid to be bold!) but I did not feel this confidence at the beginning of the assignment.
I found that working with two brushes – one loaded with colour, the other simply clean and wet, enabled me to blend out shading or combine colours on the page and this was a revelation to me! Rather than using the small, fine brushes I usually stick to (up to size 2-3), I experimented with much larger sized, well-pointed brushes (sizes 6-10) for the main colour fills, loading more colour, giving greater depth and allowing for so much more flexibility and control; I then used a near-dry brush and my finer brushes for fine detailing.
Most importantly, I made sure that my washes were absolutely dry before overpainting them; I have even invested in a small hairdryer to help with this, which has been an invaluable tool – I didn’t realise how impatient I can be!
All the colours I have used are Sennelier Artists’ Watercolours and I used hot pressed, Bockingford Block Traditional Watercolour Paper (140lb).
Although I can see there is still a lot to learn and to practise, I really do feel that I have made some progress in both my understanding of the handling of the paint and in my confidence in working the paint on the paper. I am looking forward to working on some more flower forms for the final assignment and hope to be able to continue to improve and apply what I have learned for the final pieces.
Naomi Dickins
If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.
