Hello to September! These pretty wild asters were photographed by my son, Michael, almost a year ago in Colorado. We 3 (Michael, Cari, his wife, and I) were walking along a winding path to get a good view of the aspen trees that were at their peak. While searching for the best footing, I glanced down and discovered these beautiful wild flowers. My son, concerned I might get into rocky territory, took my phone and got this great shot for us. Now we have that sweet memory in the form of a pretty painting. It will be a part of the monthly birth flowers I'm painting this year.
Here are some process photos.
I've been using Blick, hot press, block, watercolor paper recently because I haven't been happy with the grainy look I get from the Arches cold press. Although I like the way I can lay down glaze after glaze of watercolor onto cold press paper, the hot press helps me to keep from over-working the painting. Being smooth, it doesn't blend in the same way that cold press does. So, it’s been a challenge to paint using this paper, but I am happy with the results.
Here is another version of the asters.
Can you see how grainy the stems are? The stems and leaves were painted on cold pressed paper, and later I painted the asters shown at the top of this page. After all were scanned and brought into Photoshop, I added the flower heads to the stems along with a butterfly. After that, I took the images into Adobe Illustrator and printed them out on Arches paper.
Once the final image is reduced, the graininess isn't so apparent. You can see what I mean in this close up.
I am happy with both versions, and they are all set up on on Etsy. So, I will file away all the preliminary work along with the finished prints and move on to marigolds for October. My daughter's birth month. :)