Bok Choy Alter Ego

Bok Choy Alter Ego

11"x15" transparent watercolor

by Debbie Cannatella

By the time this guy was half-way done I was tired of green! After the last painting (below) of the cabbage titled "Mixed Greens" and this one, I was just about done with mixing greens. So, when the shadow began to be developed, it became this green man's alter ego and got flooded with color. The greens in this bok choy were mixed using WN phthalo blue and MG azo green, a beautiful yellow-green that has become one of my favorite pigments. It makes a gorgeous spring or sap green and when glazed over greens, it brightens them up. New gamboge and indanthrene were also used and quin rose was added in small strengths to mute the green, or ultramarine was added to pump up the blue-green. It wasn't until the very end that I mixed phthalo green (RS) with permanent alizarin and DS undersea green to layer the dramatic darks.

No masking was used in this painting. The veins were done by painting around them. I take great care in lightly drawing lines where I want the veins to be, then paint around them and erase the pencil afterward. Not only does this break up the leaf in sections, but the linework keeps me from "forgetting" and blazing right over them! Once I build up a leaf value, I will then glaze over the entire leaf with mixture of greens to melt it all together and to give the veins a hue. Selected veins were painted with shadowing to give it form. Don't forget the shadows! And remember shadows are merely a deeper, cooler shade of the local hue you are using for the object. Don't paint a blue shadow on a green leaf. Paint it darker, cooler green! It will be more believeable.

And for those local artists who have been calling me wondering when I'm going to teach a workshop in painting florals, check my website at www.debbiecannatella.com/classes for information on my next workshop here at my home studio painting "Florals: Large and Lush".