Iris and Lily Painting with a twist

This picture doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of this post. I just wanted to see what the painting would look like in black and white.

I started this painting in kind of a rounded format thinking that I might want to use it as a sticker design.

As you can see I soon abandoned that idea and just began to enjoy the work.

This time I decided to try a technique that I'd seen on a painting show by Eke Sommers over 20 years ago. You don't do a lot of shading while you're painting.
You outline EVERYTHING Then apply an even coating of black watercolor over the acrylics and let it begin to dry. Your shading is achieved by removing part of the black coating and allowing the remaining areas of black to provide the shading.

Here it is with the black acrylic paint, just before I covered it with the black watercolor.

This is the finished painting with bits of the watercolor shadows left behind just waiting to be sprayed with a clear coat to fix the remaining watercolor and make it more permanent.