Magnolia Flower with a Grisaille Underpainting

Magnolia Flower – 8" x 6" Oil on Canvas Panel

This flower inspired me to paint in a smooth and subtle manner. Typically I favor more active brushwork, however the beautiful creamy white petals just begged for a more subtle handling of paint. For this painting I laid down a grisaille underpainting (Susan Spar has a great blog post with photos explaining how to use the grisaille technique). Being that I was impatient, I did not stop to let it dry instead I then started adding color on top of my underpainting and worked on smoothing out my transitions.

This is the first painting I have completed where my goal was to minimize brush strokes and go for subtlety, however there are a few places where I added some paint texture to help catch light to emphasize the highlights and add a little sparkle.

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