Watercolor- Tropical Hibiscus

Here is another painting I did last August. In this painting, I tried layering to obtain different shades on the painting. So I painted the dark areas of the flower with blue or green and later painted over with red to obtain the various shades of purple or grey-red. Similarly for the brighter areas, I had an under-painting of yellow before painting red on top. I had a lot of trouble with the background on this one. The original background on the picture was a light gray, but I wanted something darker and cooler that would make the flower and leaves in the foreground stand out a little more. I also wanted some of the leaves on the left to be less defined to give the illusion of depth. The end result looks very tropical. I am not sure I like the final composition, but I decided to stop here and move on to another painting :)

This is a scan of the original painting, with an embedded watermark. For some reason, the colors here are a little different than the original painting. I think I need to figure out some setting on the scanner to get the true colors on the scanned image.

Size: 9in by 12in
Medium: Watercolor on watercolor paper