Charcoal and oil wipe out technique, gladioli and wild garlics

Hoorah, the buds are peeping out and spring is trying its best to appear!! So my eye has been attracted to plants. For the first time in my life, I bought some artificial flowers, so that my oil painting students could paint lilies without having to see them wilt. The only creepy thing is that the lilies themselves were fairly identical.. but they served an excellent purpose. I also succumbed to some rather splendid stems of artificial gladioli, and did a charcoal study as part of my demonstration. 

Previously, I drew some wild garlic, photographed while on a trip to Cavan with friends. We walked down a rarely-used path and the sides were banked with vast swathes of wild garlic - the aroma was wonderful. 

I did a charcoal study first, see demos below, then an oil painting. 

I began the oil painting in the same way as the charcoal, by loading the canvas with raw umber paint, wiping out the light areas, adding more ray umber where needed and wiping out again. It's a lovely soft process, allowing the work to remain blurry and unfocussed in a different way to a purely additive technique. 

After the underpainting, I painted over it with a Grisaille...

 

...then painted over the grisaille in colour. 

 

Below, the finished painting, with two layers of colour, over the Grisaille. 

For info on workshops email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk