Wow, these beautiful lilies showed up in my yard today as "volunteers". Well I've been watching the plant grow, rather fascinated to see what it was going to turn into, and today I finally got to see it in bloom. The flowers are gorgeous and showy with bold yellows and reds. I had fun photographing the blossoms from several angles. But the only way I could see to do justice to them was to do a macro painting of the blooms, so I did this painting tonight.
For the first time in years I worked on Canson paper, so this was done on a 12x16 sheet from a pad of Canson, working on the smooth side. I had worked exclusively on Canson in my early years as a pastelist, before I discovered sanded papers. It's not a bad surface to work on, and the price is certainly good for it! It does lack the tooth of sanded papers however. I had wanted to added a few brighter highlights to this but there just was no more tooth for it and the pastel would not adhere.
