The weather forecast for the next few days doesn’t look too clever according to the BBC, so I thought I ought to make the most of the sun today and get into the garden with my paints. I’m not as comfortable painting out-of-doors as I am inside; I can feel a little nervous, as a result of which I tend to rush the early stages of paintings, trying to take shortcuts when they’re not there. That is exactly what happened with this painting. Here, I used a green that I wouldn’t normally use to provide some underpainting for the leaves, thinking it would save me some time. Unfortunately, all it actually did was to negatively affect the appearance of subsequent layers of colour from my standard palette. I did manage to relax a little eventually, but this little sketch ended up taking about 2 hours to complete.

Today’s sketch was painted in Winsor and Newton alkyd (fast drying oil colour) paints on Crawford & Black 12″ x 10″ canvas. Its’ subject is a tulip, the bulb of which my mum bought at Floriade 2012. This Dutch tulip now seems to be enjoying the British Spring of 2013.