painting background

Onerom1945

The background in the photo is a pond with a reflective surface. Two questions;
1- Would you paint the entire dark background so  it would a appear to have a smooth surface? Then paint the flowers on top of the background 
OR
2- Would you paint the background around the flowers?

I have tried to paint around the flowers but then the surface does not appear uniform where the flower starts and the background meet.

Thanks a bunch

dencal

Onerom1945

Option one for sure.

Denis

BOB73

I don't know personally if it would work but I've been thinking about this since we had those discussions about removable varnish... @dencal, could we varnish the flowers and stems then paint the water and THEN remove the varnish with paint over it? Too tedious?

dencal

BOB73

I see where you’re coming from here, but fraught with drying delay, pigment/varnish binding and unintended glazing effects.

Though, something may be possible with your resist layer idea using the rubber solution (masking fluid) applied in water color painting to preserve white.

So much easier to do the background first in a pigment and Liquin layer (sans SDM) and the subject over the top.

Denis

Dianna

God I wish I could understand what you were all talking about

tassieguy

Me, too. 

Onerom1945

Thank you all for the advice. I did paint the back ground first and let it dry for a day and then went back and painted the lilies and flowers over the background.

Richard_P

Perhaps applying gloss acrylic medium to mask out the shapes, and then peel if off (with oil paint on the edges) afterwards?