Still life with flowers
- cndartstudio
- Apr 2, 2019
- 2 min read
For this exercise I wanted to experiment with a looser approach and more vibrant colours than my normal work, based on a flower vase painting I saw recently in an Arts and Crafts market. I also wanted to try the technique of the 17th century Dutch masters, of creating a flower composition using different sources.
For the background I used Acrylic paint in a combination of contrasting colours next to each other on the Chevreul colour wheel, applied with a No 12 filbert: Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow and Orange, which I like very much.
In some areas and for some of the shadows I used a mix of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, with some Cadmium Reds here and there, and chose a creamy white for the vase. I looked in various reference books for the flowers, including Billy Showel’s A-Z of flower portraits.
I did a rough under-painting in different colours, trying to complement them, and outlined some shapes with pencil before filling them in roughly in acrylic
Having developed my basic design I painted over the detail of the flowers in WM Oil, and as I was working on several exercises at the same time I underestimated the time to do so many flowers. Time was running out for my submission date so I didn’t finish the piece completely, there are still some flowers not painted yet and some light and shadow on the vase to be refined. My unfinished work is -
Although not finished I think it's an effective composition, though very much out of my comfort zone in terms of colours. My main worry is that I am on the edge of over-doing the number of flowers, and as I’m working from different sources and not from life I need to resolve the lights and shadows. There’s no consistency as the light on some of flowers comes mainly from the right but the light on the vase comes mainly from the left. I will keep practicing and keep working on it.
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