I took some photos about a month ago at Massee Lane Gardens, home of the American Camelia Society, located in central Georgia. It was freezing that morning, but I managed to photograph a few rolls. The reference image is from the day. This camelia was glowing in deep shadow with sunlight hitting it from the side and behind.
Yupo isn't the best surface for capturing the glow, maybe. You can get great color, and texture, but not smooth values. Got to have the darks to make the light shine. There is one little blip on the bottom right hand side that I really like. I cropped it out for a close up.
I did experiment with this a bit. I used fluid acrylics to try and underglaze some areas. Once the acrylic is dry it doesn't move as watercolor does. It is worth more experimenting. I was using quinacridone rose, and ultramarine blue, mix with a touch of payne's grey to get a purple, bluish, grey color. Interesting that the quin rose and ultramarine seperated on the paper. I had a purple area that I touched with a damp brush. The pink was absorbed leaving the blue behind.
Most of the color that you see is watercolor glazed on top.
