The trick to painting a bluebonnet landscape is to have the size of flower and amount of detail on each flower decrease as you visually travel back into the distance. But it is easier to paint in the opposite direction. I have muted the distant bluebonnets into something a little more hazy by adding tiny dots of white, green and orange. Orange is blue's complement, or opposite color. Complements will grey out a color that is too strong. But I overdid it a bit and had to add some more tiny bits of blue on top.
Since I will be adding a fence to define the edge of the hill, my bluebonnets can jump from distant haze to midrange. In the midrange bluebonnets, you can see the dab of white on top of each flower. The ones near the front of this section have larger white dabs accompanied by a bit of light green. They also have three blues in each flower, as I start to establish light and shadow.
Don't fall in love with that front row, as most of them will be covered by the front bluebonnets, which will fill most of the section that is now green. My next job is to decide how big the front bluebonnets should get. Once they are in place, I can start on the abandonded farm house, the background trees and the big tree.
Nan Henke
Texas Hill Country Art
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