The painting of the Stinging Nettle Fairies is finished! Decided in the end not to add any other colours than green, sometimes the trick is knowing where to stop!
So this painting is entirely in Prussian Blue (see my post about the blue underpainting for the general idea, and the previous post to this one for early photos of this actual painting), followed by a complete pasting-over with a wash of green (mostly Cobalt Green Light, with a little Indian Yellow mixed in). After that, highlights happened simply by a careful removal of some of the green layer with brushes and water. The green lifts off the paper easily, and the blue does not, which is why the original work in blue behind remains fairly untouched by all the mucking-about on top….
I shall not go into detail about lifting colour off just now, because the ‘how to do stuff’ section of this blog is badly in need of a detailed explanation of this process, so for the moment, here are simply the photos to look at.





Above and below we have baby stinging nettle fairies. Usually I don’t go for ‘baby’ things, in fact these might be the first baby fairies I have ever painted (though not the first babies), but the fairies are a gang, rather than an individual as in the other flower fairy paintings because, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, where there is one stinging nettle there are invariably lots, and so baby ones seemed necessary, too. I am sure all the little nettle seedlings each has its own fairy!

They are well hard! I love them. It’s easy to remember the Latin Urtica for Stinging Nettles. They ‘Urt 😉
Yes, I always thought that, too, Rosie! And thanks 🙂
Hi Viv
Marvellous picture! You might want to have it pointed out that you’ve actually mis-typed ‘Urtica’ in the heading though. xx
Doh! fixed now, thanks….. though that has now changed the page link too, which could be annoying…
Brilliant! I’m off out to look for punky, tea swilling Nettle Fairies.
Thank you! 🙂
been in there harvesting nettles this morning… ouchy little fellows. I’m sure I would have seen the fairies too, but I just didn’t want to look close enough!
[…] The Stinging Nettle Fairies – a whole bunch of them, not just an individual portrait like my other Flower Fairies, because where there is one stinging nettle there are invariably a lot of them. There is much more about these, plus some work-in-progress and technical stuff, on my blog: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/stinging-nettle-fairies/ https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/urtica-dioica-stinging-nettle-fairies-finished/ […]