White Calla Lilies

When I walked to my sister's front door one day last summer...(It was the summer of 2020, so I'm sure I wore a mask, walked to the front door, dropped something off on the step, didn't touch anything extra, and tried not to breathe... Please, COVID, go away soon!)

Anyway... She always has beautiful flower beds, and on this particular day the calla lilies were so gorgeous that they looked like they couldn't be real. I took a dozen photos thinking that one day I'd paint them.  That day was this week.

It was my first time to paint on a black canvas, and quite frankly, I didn't expect to like it much. The first tricky thing was how to get my drawing to show up.  Here's the trick I used.  I covered the back side of my drawing paper with chalk.  Then I laid it on the canvas and traced over the lines I wanted to show up.  That pencil pressure left the chalk where I wanted it on the black canvas.  Ta-da!

I was surprised at how much I liked painting on the black.  I did have to be careful to choose the more opaque paints (titanium white, chromium oxide green, cadmium yellow, etc.) because the translucent ones didn't pull their weight on covering the black.  I ended up covering all the black canvas with deep greens to bring some life into the flat, dead black of the canvas.

I really do love the final product.  I think this one has a very dramatic feel to it. 

I already have a plan to paint on black again soon.

My weekly art challenge was "On Black."  Kind of nice how that worked out, huh... (It was, after all, my week to choose the topic.)

Original Oil Painting on 8"x 10" Stretched Canvas

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