As I mentioned last Monday Gaugain is my favourite tree peony; but that doesn't mean I can capture it well. In fact I have the not uncommon & very frustrating experience of increasing the likelihood of making a complete hash of things in direct proportion to my level of caring that it come out well. (This is why I like to work with slightly broken crap, because long experience has taught me I often get a better outcome.)

Watercolour on paper, specifically cold-press canson 140lb/300g watercolour paper neasuring 5.5x8.5 inches/13.9 x 21.6 cm. 31may2017.

This is what happened here; and taking any number of nearly identical reference shots (about 18 of them) failed to fix the fact that it's impossible to read what's going on with the flower, which looks like an amorphous blob.

/LumixDMC-LX100/2020LX100/20200527LX/P1140424adj.JPG

So, since the drawing was already a mess and I didn't quite feel up to creating new and ever better messes, I decided to rework this one, on the theory that it could be a fridayfugly post.

/LumixDMC-LX100/2017LX100/20170531LX/P1040027.JPG 1/400sec f2.1, 0 ev. As is.

That didn't quite work out^[1] but here is one of those reference shots. To be truthful, I don't think my fixup improved the original any—if anything, rather the reverse—but now having made the attempt, I can in good conscience try again, and put something on the back side of the paper.

I will say that at least I enjoyed the time spent messing around, and in these days of pandemics and protests, that's no small thing.

07jun22: added peony tag

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.