Trying Something Different

I hadn’t done any floral pastel paintings for awhile and decided I needed a break from landscapes. I chose to do a rose of Sharon and another of magnolias and printed half a dozen photos of various blossoms. I cropped and edited the photos. I often have two or three paintings in process on the easels at the same time.

One thing difficult this time was using photos of individual blossoms to recreate a totally different scene. The first major challenge was arranging the individual pieces onto a sheet of paper. I also decided to use some smaller pieces of BFK Rives paper than the larger landscape scenes I usually do.

I am not confident to draw flowers freehand to get the right dimensions, angles, and shapes. That means I trace the outlines and general shapes using graphite paper. I took a couple of the individual photos and began playing around with arranging a layout. In the end, for the Rose of Sharon, I used four photos.

It was almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle figuring out the layout. With each photo, I had to decide which way to angle it, and which one should go on top or to the left. Would it look better on the bottom? The four photos ended up as this:

I also scribbled in some background coloring to get me started. (The fourth photo eventually ended up being in the lower right corner. 

As for the magnolia photos, I decided to do two paintings, one on white BFK Rives and the other on black. I had six photos and mixed and matched in creating the compositions, and again, it was figuring which photo tracing to incorporate on which part of the paper. Below are the initial layouts for both. Magnolia 1 and Magnolia 2 (sure wish I could come up with more interesting names.)

I used one of the photos for both paintings to make sure I had an odd number of blossoms for a better composition. All three of these photos show the initial pastel work. Once the initial drawings were done, I taped the Rose of Sharon to one easel and the two magnolias to another easel side by side. I figured I’d do these paintings at the same time as the colors will be the same. Adding some color, even in the beginning, helps me see where I’m heading.

There were challenges galore. The biggest issue for me is I prefer sharp lines in my paintings. It’s difficult to get sharpness using soft pastels, even with pastel pencils. Once a soft layer is put down, it’s hard to get a sharp line.

I also found the tracing made the petals a little smaller than I wanted, so I redrew them bigger. Yes, I tend to move lines and change things.

I often tend to be a bit muted in colors. I, personally, like the moodiness, but… So with these paintings, I decided to go at them using brighter colors. After over a month of working on these, I’m calling the Rose of Sharon done. The two magnolias are getting close to being done. I’m still contemplating.