Original oil painting on mdf panel 8x8"

 First of all, let me tell you why I didn't post a painting yesterday.  I did make a painting. Maybe it was the late night the night before, or maybe it was the fact that I only had one hour in which to paint, but I can honestly say that  the painting was the most hideous, ugly, ill thought out and executed I have painted in many years!!
Sometimes that happens..
I took great pleasure in scraping it off the panel so that I could no longer see it, and at least rescue the panel for another painting.
I was chatting to an artist friend about it, and she told me that those paintings we hate are the best ones! I was taken aback at first, but what she meant was that we learn from our mistakes and failures make us try even harder next time.
So today, I wanted to paint something a lot better. I got a bit over ambitious in fact and decided to paint the whole bunch of tulips before they wilted. There was no way I could complete it in a couple of hours, so I had to work on it some more in the afternoon. There are a couple of things I'm not quite happy with but I wont be scraping this one. Phew!

Please excuse the fuzzy photograph, Ill upload a better one as soon as I get the chance.

 Original oil painting on mdf panel 10x5" available from Newbloodart 

It felt a bit spring like this morning, and I felt inspired to paint some flowers.  I bought a bunch of white tulips, but just painted this one as that's all I had time for. To paint flowers you have to work incredibly quickly as they change shape much more rapidly than you'd expect.  I would have preferred to spend a bit longer, but by the time I'd picked up my daughter from nursery and come home, the leaf had wilted and the flower opened further, so I decided to leave it as it is.
As I was painting I was listening to this video tutorial by Mark Carder, where he talks about learning to work quickly. He gives great advice - I highly recommend watching it.
There are some process shots below.  As usual, I was working from the back to the front and from the darks to the lights, saving the highlights right until the end.

 Oil on primed card 4x6" available from Newbloodart

It was great to find a couple of calendula flowers still growing on my allotment yesterday.  Looking forwards to some spring bulbs coming through soon as well.
I perched this arrangement right at the front edge of my shadow box which gave the lighting a softer more natural feel. I was surprised to be able to capture the intense orange of the petals but I think maybe the subdued lighting helped me with this.