Plumbago

About three years ago, I planted a single one-gallon plumbago plant in my front flower bed with my white roses, to fill in the spot where my elderly lavender plant had given up the ghost. The plumbago didn't die...but it didn't grow. It just sat there, quietly, in stasis. I watered it, I stared at it, I wondered what was the problem. A neighbor two blocks down has a glorious six-foot-high hedge of plumbago surrounding his yard, so I knew it wasn't that the climate didn't work for it. I let it be, and forgot to worry about it.

This winter, we had record rains in California. A few weeks of nothing but rain, followed by substantial incidences of once- or twice-a-week downpours. A couple of weeks ago, after all the rain had subsided and I decided I had to start watering things again, I went out and really looked at my front flower bed, and was amazed. The plumbago had tripled its size and, even more exciting, was blooming like crazy.

Today I cut a few stalks of the plumbago flowers and a couple of white roses, put them into a clear glass vase, and took them out to the patio to capture in watercolor. My intent was to do a wet-in-wet flower picture like those so many of my "idols" do so beautifully and seemingly so easily. So I taped off the margins, wet down the paper, and began.

The paper was way too wet to start, so instead of defined blossoms for the plumbago, I got vague purple "blooms" (pun intended). So I left that area, and painted around my two white roses at the top with some background color, which was more successful. The third rose, below, didn't come off quite as well, but at least I saved the whites. Then I moved to painting the plumbago flowers.

Two hours later, I had fiddled with this thing to the point of frustration and exhaustion. All the blue-purple color turned to the same tone as it dried (and I failed to mix the proper blue anyway!), so I went back in with darks. Then the white paper in between seemed wrong, so I went in with lime green. Then it seemed to need more darks, so I put some of those in, but not in a very logical way. I went back to the bloomy part at the top and painted some defined blossoms over the top. I messed with the water and vase and couldn't get it to look remotely like reflections on water. Finally, I decided to stop. It's either not finished, overdone, or ready to toss. But for the sake of those two white roses at the top (which weren't even the primary focus of my intentions for this piece), I kept it and am posting it! AAAAAHHHHH!

DAY 29: PLUMBAGO (& ROSES)

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

On 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, with Paul Jackson paints...