Watercolor and Gouache Floral

I'm still playing around with watercolor and gouache and thought I'd try a flower painting instead of an animal this time.  These are some cosmos flowers from a reference photo by Debbie Byess on Paint My Photo.  It's a work in progress and is watercolor and gouache on Arches Hot Pressed watercolor paper.

I still have some shading to do on the stems and some additions of the ferny leaves.  Also, the background needs some more work.  While it looks black here, it's really a mixture of various greens, blues and the pink and maroon of the flowers.  Since I'll want to use this primarily for prints (if it ends up good enough!), I want the background to look flatter and more varied than it appears right now.

While I've got you all looking, I'd like to put in a plug for my friend, Sue Clinker from PencilPix blogspot.  She has a wonderful entry in a "Best of British Drawing Contest" sponsored by Derwent and the winner will be determined by votes.  Her painting is of her husband trying to bar-b-que in the rain (which I gather is pretty typical of British weather much of the time).  Here is a link to the contest:

http://promoshq.wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/222621/voteable_entries?page=1


You can vote for up to 20 entries and I do hope you'll find Sue's entry and will vote for it as I think she's done a wonderful job on this painting.  It's called "Typical British BBG" by Sue Clinker.