Florals are Easy and other Fallacies...

Here it is, my first still life floral - ever.

It all started innocently enough. I bought myself a spring floral bouquet and a couple of hyacinths as a reward for enduring, yet another, dental appointment. With half of my face still frozen I could hardly wait to get these beauties home and into some water. Then when I had them all set up I thought "I just HAVE to paint them".

So the next day when the freezing had well worn off and the pain from the needle that did the freezing was really apparent I decided to start the still life to take my mind off of the pain. I thought I'd be done in a few hours.

I had to rearrange my living room/studio, who am I kidding, it's a studio with minimal living room. The photo above was after about 8 hours I think. You can see the floral still life ontop of my much covetted red Dukabhor table that I have moved with me 5 times since I got it. I love that table.

At a certain point I was beginning to stress a bit then I looked behind me and saw this. Yeah, my cat sure wasn't stressing AT ALL. She had complete confidence in my ability. My ability to feed her that is. She's right about that :)

This gives you an idea of the color pallette I was working with. I ended up using another tray for glazes.

All in all the painting took about 15 hours. It was sealed with two glazes of sealer then varnished. The image continues around the edges so one doesn't have to frame it if they don't want to.

I now have even more respect for floral artists. It ain't as easy as it looks after all but it was well worth the lesson.