New Paintings from a Trip to the Garden

I am taking another online painting class.  Yes I quit my watercolor class at the Adult Ed.  The teacher drove me crazy.  So now I am taking my second online class with Laure Ferlita.
She does the Imaginary Trip classes.  This class is called Imaginary Visit to the Garden .

Our first painting was of Violet Wood Sorrel.  It is a delicate little flower that you find on a walk in the forest.  I'm not sure is this is an east coast or west coast violet sorrel.

So we are suppose to sketch and paint for 30 min. then take a photo.  This is because if we were really out in a forest sketching a little flower, we would have to do it quickly.  Maybe the light is changing or a rain storm comes or a little forest creature come and eats the flower....LOL
So here is the quick 30 min. sketch painting. I'm using a watercolor Moleskine journal.


Then we can go back and finish the painting.  I say "We" because there are a lot of us taking the class.  Laure has set up a blog where we can post our paintings and then we comment on everyones painting.  It is really nice.

Ok, Here is my finished painting of Violet Wood Sorrel



The painting above shows the darks that are in my painting but the lower painting shows some of the blue splattering.



I changed the painting a little.  The assignment asked us to put forest litter for the background. Well I wanted to try something that interests me.  I wanted to make my flowers glow or pop by using chroma and temperature.  Chroma is purity or intensity of a color. So to do this I needed to gray down the leaf litter since grayed down hues have less chroma.  Less Chroma will recede and more intense or the purer the hue is then the hue will accede.
For Temperature in the leaf litter I tried to use cool colors.

With Chroma brighter colors tend to move closer, duller colors tend to recede.
Also I was working on Temperature.
With Temperature- warmer colors tend to move closer, cooler colors tend to recede.
Of course Value is the third element of all this.
I really want to learn to paint with using Value, Chroma and Temperature in mind.


Well that is it.  There is more to come. We get 2 assignments a week for a month straight.
Woo Hoo !!!

Edited to add: 4/17/11  I took another stab at painting the Violet Wood Sorrel.  I also took the photos outside.  It was cloudy when I took the photos so I tried using a flash.
This composition is a little different.  I like it better than the paintings above.



This one was taken outside without a flash.