Americana Canvas challenge - Purple Rain Bloom

There was a lovely challenge set by DecoArt to their Helping Artists and Bloggers this month which was to paint a canvas in under 2 hours, using DecoArt Americana paints.

I entered 2 canvases. This is my second and the simplest of the two, it's also the one I remembered to take pictures of! Completed in just 1 hour and hastily submitted before getting ready to go away the next day. #alwaysinarush 

Once I was home again, I added a little more decoration, which only took about half an hour, and then I was much happier with it! I hope this gives you a little yearning to get your paints out and have a play too. 

To see the other painting, a seascape on my FB page, click here.

The blue background was created just by brushing across 3 shades of blue and the Warm White shown in the product pic at the end of this post. I used a 'wet on wet' technique to blend the colours but only brushed across in one direction to get the stripy/ variegated shades of blue using the large flat brush.

I then took a much smaller brush and began sweeping the long petals, picking up a mixture of the Bubble Gum pink and Purple Rain... I remembered to take a pic and dropped my brush in the paint!

Continuing with the petals and blending in white too, again while the paints were wet.

Once I had the main shape of the bloom, I just added more layers and started to defined the edge of each petal with the purple,
adding highlights with the flat edge of the small brush using Warm White. 

Once I was happy with the petals, I added the center of the flower, using the pink
and picking up white to give it a contrasting edge. 

Here is the picture I submitted, before I added the hearts to the center and the dangles to the petals.
Below are the products I used. 
I used DecoArt's beautiful Purple Rain paint for the first time ever on this canvas, bringing back many happy memories as I painted...then just a few hours later I heard of Prince's death......what can I say, grab every moment guys. Suz x

Thanks for looking! Suz