Tulips, Tulips, Tulips

4/22/13 watercolor, Canson Mixed Media sketchbook

With an urge to see a few tulips, I joined the Anacortes Sketchers and Whidbey Island Sketchers in the Skagit Valley tulip fields for a day of color and sunshine. All that sunshine was deceptive, though – we could have used a bit more warmth!

 

4/22/13 watercolor, S & B Beta

4/22/13 Diamine Eclipse, S&B Beta

When I saw the endless fields of red and purple, my first reaction was to be overwhelmed. Where do I start? How? I decided it was a good opportunity to paint the way I have always wanted to paint but haven’t done much of – straight to color, no messing around with drawn lines first. When I switched views for a close-up of a few tulips, I considered drawing an outline first as I usually would. But I had enjoyed the looseness of painting the fields straight with paint so much that I decided to sketch the individual tulips that way, too.

 

After stopping for lunch at a food truck parked outside Christenson’s Nursery and Greenhouse in LaConner, we were all still chilly from the morning in the fields, so we set up our stools inside the greenhouses. Although the flowers there were beautiful, it was hard to sketch potted plants after seeing the tulip fields, so I wandered until I spotted a couple of large cages filled with doves.

 

My thanks to Missy, Lisbeth, Carolyn and the other Anacortes and Whidbey sketchers for their warm welcome today! And I happily discovered that most of us will be meeting again very soon – at Gail Wong and Frank Ching’s Line to Color workshop in Mt. Vernon this Saturday!



Photo of Tina by Lisbeth Cort

Sketching at Christenson's Nursery