Thistles on a Cloudy Day

I have finally completed the thistle painting I started a couple of weeks ago.  I had set it aside for a while, when the Holidays started to take a lot of extra time, and just got back to it this weekend.

Like the Funky Parrot (entry below), this painting uses Twinks on Yupo.  Again, the class lesson called for outlining the flowers and stems with black India ink, but when I started to do that, it looked terrible,  Once again, I removed the ink -- and that also took the paint off in that area -- repainted the damaged section, and stared at it for a while.  I decided to use ink, but instead of black, which was too harsh, I used a deep purple ink around the flowers and deep green along the stems and leaves.  I also enhanced the sky, added clouds and shaded the clouds with graphite.  This I liked much better, so here is the final painting.

Thistles on a Cloudy Day