The first floor of the house I live has been sold recently, and the new owner of the flat seems to have moved in. I haven't met her yet but thought I'd leave a welcome card. I rummaged in a small drawer where I keep cards both used and new, but I couldn't find a suitable card to write on. So I improvised a watercolour painting. It was painted in less than 10 minutes. It's strange how this casual improvised painting was a lot easier to do for me, than paintings which is more contemplated...what's in that "contemplation"? They are the thought of "oh, I don't want to mess it up" "I want it to be a good painting" "If I put this colour here, it may all go wrong..." "It doesn't quite look like the photo I am working from." Etc etc. they don't really seem like helpful thoughts.
The thing is, I wasn't even looking at a bunch of flowers or photographs to paint from. This is really the concept of flowers...there isn't a species of plant that's identifiable by this painting. I put down a few brush strokes in a "flowery" colours and "leafy" colours and they still looked like flowers (I hope). I think I have learnt something useful from this little exercise. I can try to experiment with more casual and fewer brush strokes than fiddling about with many, and not so much sticking to how it resembles the original photograph.
