Fresh Orchids at market are interesting to me. The shapes that form an Orchid bloom have a lot of variation and it holds my attention. These two beauties were scouted out at a farmers market in Central Florida and I edited the composition quite a bit from my reference images to get what I wanted.

Sometimes watercolor can be a challenge. Making sure we reserve white paper as the white of an object is tricky, plus, layering and all sorts of techniques can even change with the type of paper. This happened on this painting, where I was trying a new paper that I thought I had worked with a long time ago, but it lead to some frustration. It really took on subtle color more than I expected so I had to be careful in the light parts of the flower's detail, I found out that the paper did not lend itself to layering and building up color at all like I was used to with Arches paper. I almost ditched this painting! I had to rethink my approach in the darker areas and try to salvage some parts that were going sideways. It worked, however, even though it's the professional grade paper, I'll never use Strathmore watercolor paper again.

The actual Orchids are quite small and delicate, but I thought working much larger would give a room that tropical feel. Transparent watercolor on Strathmore cold press paper.