"L'eau de Parfum" Watercolor

About a week ago I finished this watercolor, which I named "L'eau de Parfum" since the colors and technique seem so water-like.

"L'eau de Parfum" - Watercolor - Dec. 2011, ~22"w x 15"h

I initially approached it with a similar design as "Oian Sunset" - a large-scale pattern in the background, with some flowers in the foreground. (The photograph of the flowers I based the design on was taken in Paris's Jardin du Luxembourg in the summer of 2010.) But once I started painting it, I was inspired to try something different. In an effort to make the background look more spontaneous, I added splashes of paint splatter throughout the piece. I really like how the effect looks in the background - I was afraid it would look too "messy" and just like I didn't know how to paint, but it ended up looking very intentional and whimsical - but when I tried a similar treatment with the flowers, I was really unsatisfied. For someone who paints flowers a lot, I sure do struggle with them sometimes. :-/

"L'eau de Parfum" - a close-up of the background

I ended up adding colored pencil accents to the top of many of the flower petals, since I got to a point of overworking where the paper was way too saturated for me to successfully fix the issues with more watercolor paint - a technique I also used for my "Santorini" watercolor earlier this year. I suppose it doesn't look too bad, but I always end up disliking the final paintings when I had to resort to a last-minute colored-pencil fix. It feels like a total cop-out. Maybe sometime I should plan ahead to use colored pencil detailing. I'm sure if it was always part of the plan, I would be more happy with the end result, rather than when it's a mistake-fixing solution.

"L'eau de Parfum" - a close-up of the color-pencil accented flowers

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