Dahlia

This painting was pretty much entirely inspired by a dahlia from my garden. It is painted in gouache with some details in coloured pencil.

This was the original design from my sketchbook. I was working in an A2 size which is rare for me, but it was a nice challenge to have a bigger working area and to include a background. 

Here is a picture of it in progress. I had done the base layers for the background and was just starting to fill in the figure. I decided to go with a warmer pink shadow of the skin instead of the purple I sometimes use and I think it works really well with the overall colour scheme.

And the finished piece! I'm really happy with how it turned out and I can see myself working in this size again. In total it took me two full days to paint and it was really fun.

These are some of my favourite details, I love the texture of the pencil crayon on the gouache. I think it works really nicely. 

Thanks for reading!