Friday, March 25, 2011

My Fantasy Flowers


I had in mind for some time the idea of doing a series of paintings featuring flowers. Not simply pretty petals and manicured border fodder. But rather…

hmm, flowers with a difference?

Well, we all like flowers (don’t we?) and I’ve always been drawn toward their infinite variety, transitory beauty and eh…flawless design. Dandelions are especially ephemeral. We’ve all held one up and…puff….gone, a myriad floating seeds. They are also quite visually striking, especially up close!

It was whilst looking at macro photography of magnified objects that I had the idea for this series. Close up, cropped images in a highly stylized manner. One of the great joys of being an artist is to take the familiar and by invention create a new way of seeing it!

The medium used here was acrylic paint applied in multiple layers with my favourite air-brush. This allows an even application and an effect of depth I really like. The initial design of the flower was drawn using masking fluid and so the paint covered the mask and once dry the mask could be peeled away to reveal the design below. The dandelion head was built up using a light impasto on top of acrylic gesso into which I scrapped and pushed the brush end until I had an effect I liked.



Painting like this tends to be intuitive and often comprise of a sequence of variations and 'lucky mistakes' (as Picasso called them) Together with trial and error you build up the painting with what works and discard (obviously) what doesn't. Thus, hopefully, you come away with a piece that both works as a picture and pleases as a painting.


Shirley
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