Glorious Globes
I discovered allium growing in a wild garden a few years ago and I’ve been enthralled by it ever since. This is the third year of blooms for the bulbs I planted in our garden and love the bright purple globes popping up amidst the green foliage of poppies, daisies, and other perennials that will bloom next. I hope you enjoy its unfolding as much as I have.
Tips and Techniques– When you have fussy, small florets like allium or lilacs, you can paint a few of the small blooms and use a wet-in-wet technique and some negative painting to suggest the rest. Combining precise elements with loose watercolor produces more evocative blossoms and invites the viewer to fill in the details.
Drawn In 
Such gorgeous blooms and painting.
Thanks so much Janette! I appreciate it.
Love!
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Thanks Judy!
Lovely progression of blooming! Great tip for outlining a few of the flowers and loose areas for our brains to fill in!
I enjoyed drawing the blooms as they opened. In the past, I’ve just done the fully opened flowers. I enjoyed following the progression.
Wow! This is spectacular.
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div>Mine are just starting to come out and had no clue how to approach sketching them.
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Good luck! Hope this page helps gives you ideas for how to approach them.
Beautiful and full of light!
Love how you’ve suggested the details of these blooms. Your tips are useful to all those who want to improve their skills with drawing and painting what they see in nature. How you do your page layout is also useful information.
Can you please tell us what colours you used to get the right pink/purple?
Hi Peri– Thanks for being in touch! I used quin magenta and ultramarine blue for the blossoms. You can go light to dark and pink to purple depending on the amount of pigment and water. Hope you have a chance to try painting them.
I do like following a progression – you do it so beautifully! Inspiring!
i love it! Set a standard for me and I think all of us, and an inspiration. I am now starting my summer wanderings and observations of nature and of our magnificent planet. I will stay tuned. Are we not lucky to appreciate what we have. Thank You Jean. Lou in NC. Also this summer I will be in wandering mode and my email is kandllouis46@gmail.com please this as my contact point. This is my tablet email. Many thanks, lou Kandl
Quite lovely.
love this page Jean…
one of my fave blooms this time of year
thanks so much for sharing your beautiful work and notes
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Linda
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stunning, you captured them beautifully
Alliums – especially the big purple ones – are so much fun. I like the way you brought some softness into the rendition because it would be only too easy to make it a stiff, dense sphere. It’s always nice to see the bud progression, the bulb, the flower closeup…and wow, the lettering!
As you said, your technique is more evocative than prescriptive and it really does invite the viewer in. Wonderful, Jean!
Wow! beautiful pastel art piece
Thank you! I tried this technique for trees.
I love that technique of ‘negative painting’. You’ve used it in the roots of the bulb, and I’ve seen it in your bird’s nests, too. My brain understands it, but my fingers don’t. I’ll just admire yours!
It’s a very useful technique to know. Glad you like it!
Hi Jean, I love this page! Thank you for the tips and all the inspiration in your blog. They are really useful. I’ve tried to make a similar page, My allium purple sensation is flowering so beautiful in the garden at this moment.
Thank you! I just went out to get the mail and discovered that my allium are opening, too. I love them and need to make time to paint them while they last. Enjoy yours!