I worked this painting from a photograph I took of these beautiful flowers in a pot in my garden. But as I worked I wanted to see a wonderful blue sky in the background so changed the composition.

I drew the fuchsias, and instead of the landscape layout of my photograph changed it to a portrait one to suggest these were hanging from above rather than looking down on them from a bird’s eye view, as I was.

I love using these reds for the palette of these colour flowers: rose madder, purple lake, crimson – all the really vibrant colours in the red spectrum.

I painted the fuchsias first. I worked light to dark guided by the light source. For the leaves, I used a variety of greens I mixed from some muddy palettes of various colours, adding some sap green to that mix where necessary. I impressed into the paper the veins on the leaves with the edge of a paper clip.

I used a cerulean blue for the sky in the background. It was quite good fun having to paint carefully around the flowers. I then added some dots of colour to complete the painting.