While on an educational trip to learn how to teach my fourth and fifth graders about the plants in the desert, I learned about Yuccas. These plants captivated me and I decided to add them at the end of my watercolor collection for Red Rock Canyon. The Ten Tiny Paintings focusing on Red Rock Canyon are now available on my website! In this post, I will be writing about Paintings Number 9 and 10. They are both zoomed in versions of the Yucca plants in the desert. Native Americans used these plants for many things. One use of the plants were the fibers in the leaves. For the last 2 paintings I focused on the white fibers historically used to mend and make clothing for native tribes. Each painting has no pencil sketch prior to the paint application so they are very different. While hiking with my daughter recently I shared this knowledge with her and she felt the texture of the fibers.
Number 9 was painted using blue and brown mixed together to make a dark shadow color resembling black. I left the white fiber hairs very carefully while covering the surface with the darker colors. I started to add olive and brighter green layers to emphasize the leaf sections of the plant. The goal of these two paintings is to show the movement and growth of these wonderful plants. I hope you enjoy this one. Let me know what you see in the painting, I am excited to know!
Number 10 is the final piece in the series and I used a similar concept from Number 9. I left the fiber strands white and worked around them with brown and black. In this painting I decided to work the green in each leaf simultaneously with the darker colors. This painting has a lot of layers with three different types of green paint. I also used burnt sienna, and yellow ochre for highlights. These colors created the variants I was hoping for to show the difference in the leaves of the plant. Each painting expresses the different lighting that happens while out in the desert depending on time of day. I hope you enjoy this painting. Let me know if you see anything in this one as well!
For more paintings or more information about my newer works, I have links to my Instagram and Facebook pages on the top left of my website. There are painting videos on both so everyone can view them. Thank you for reading and have a Marvelous Monday!
-Karen Hilliard
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