Water Lily Memories

 When I was a young girl I was taken to see an exhibit of famous impressionist paintings and among them was one of Monet's Water lily Paintings.

It affected me profoundly because I'd only seen slick, smooth images of that painting in books. Standing in front of it I was shaken by the sheer size of it. 

 The next thing to shake me was that when you looked at it up close it had the same lumpy, uneven and thick surface as paintings that I had been stacking out by my dumpsters for years because I thought I was doing it wrong. I used to watch and wonder as  people carried them away what they wanted them for or what they'd be doing with them. I guess I still wonder all these years later.

I never attempted to paint water lilies myself because he'd already done so many that the world wasn't likely to need my feeble attempts.

I'm older now and after half a century of being my own sort of Artist I don't really care what anyone thinks and figured I might as well try painting a few waterlilies myself.

This photo shows my second painting I did along with the coffee mug that I had it printed on. I was very happy with the way that the pattern repeats matched up.

Not having the money or materials most people have I started with 4 x 6 inch canvas panels that I thought could be poked in birthday cards etc. as gifts.

Here are a few of my first attempts:

#1. Acrylic paint on 4 x 6 canvas panel

#2.  Acrylic Paint on 8 x 10 inch stretched canvas

These photos are in reverse order so that you can enjoy the finished one first.

The reason that there are so many photos is that I just couldn't decide where to stop.

             I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on it.

# 3. Another 4 x 6 inch canvas panel.

Here are the working photos of this one in the correct order.

 

Between this photo and the finished one I kept working on adding stokes in different shades of pink, blue and yellow.

I enjoyed this project and the things that it taught me so I think that WATER LILLIES are a subject that I will return to again and again.

I was very pleased to see how well this matched up when used as a repeat pattern.

This 4 x 6 inch waterlily p0ainting was done in Feb. of 2021