Yellow Peril

 "Yellow Peril"

Mixed Media ( Not watercolour )

Ragwort in the field near our cottage.

It is hot, sunny and a beautiful day. I am listening to bees buzzing as I paint outside. Near our cottage is a field where horses usually graze. I love watching them and I have my favourites. But at this time of year they can't use the field due to a plant that appears annually. The owners of the stables will be out in force trying to pull out these weeds that can cause serious health problems to horses.

Its' amazing how something that looks so colourful can be so perilous.

Hence the title of my painting this afternoon. I am working through my studio cupboards and gradually working with products I have long forgotten about. Years ago before I became so passionate about painting only in pure watercolour I used all manner of things to create vibrant colour. Nothing was offlimits and I loved discovering new techniques and ideas to create texture an patterns.

I started painting in quite pale watercolour shades in UK years ago. I then moved to Asia. But it was my move to Dubai where I really fell in love with colour first. Here I experimented with other mediums. I worked realistic portraits in oil and pastel. And I played with inks for the first time. This was so long ago now that I had forgotten all about them. At this time in my life I had a wonderful group of International Professional Artist friends. We would often show together and we would take it in turns to meet in each others houses to paint together. My favourite weeks were the experimental sessions. Where one artist had the task of finding something unique to paint as the chosen experiment. I loved it so much. There were so many things we came up with as aideas. We tried just about anything to see if it would stain or interact as watercolour does. The ink session was a favourite  and the fun we had is still in my mind. What we mixed it with was interesting too. It wasnt used just on its own. And thats how I created the above painting. "Yellow Peril".

Painting a watercolour with the addition of ink today brought back many happy memories. All started by a wonderful surprise phone call. One of my dear friends from this art group is visiting me from Dubai this week. So this piece was  inspired by my talking to Vandana.

 The view  I was painting isn't quite so dramatic. I took the yellow of the ragwort and used it for the sky colour to  add more warmth against my selection of a dark background to create the "evil" perilous plant. 

Now I have studied the photograph I may just try this again as it was such fun to paint!

Ragwort.

Peril for horses

You can read about Ragwort via this link.

http://www.worldhorsewelfare.org/ragwort

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Whatever you are doing, enjoy it ! Sometimes as artists we need a little break from our usual way of working. Today I had a holdiay of sorts. Painting with another medium.

But my favourite is still watercolour!

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