Blue Hydrangeas Study

 

12x9in. oil on canvas - sold

Another Paint Coach study in the books! This one is a still life of blue hydrangeas, an orange and some grapes. I wanted to practice grapes for my own fruit composition, and the study really helped.

Poppies in the Mountains

5x4in. oil on canvas panel - not available

This spring I started to vend at craft fairs and my first-ever craft fair required a raffle item from each vendor. Since I am an artist, I figured a small painting would be perfect. Not exactly knowing what to paint, I turned to my resources. Indeed, this painting is composed from no single reference photo, instead, multiple references Frankensteined together to make my finished piece. The mountains in the background were inspired by Bob Ross' glorious mountainscapes, the midground a Patreon tutorial by Paint Coach focusing on atmospheric perspective and the foreground a photo of poppies from the Cascades National Park. I especially like how the poppies pop against the green grass, and how the grass reflects in the river. Practicing working on my own compositions is difficult but it rendered great results.

Mirabilis Jalapa

4x4in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

Full disclosure: these flowers may not be Mirabilis Jalapa but Google gave me a very similar image/article result that looked identical to the reference photo that I took and I'm going with it. That being said, I loved the pinks, purples and blues that made up the petals and I really like the pops of orange that stand out against the petals. I also wanted to try out making a more "blurred" background so I really pushed the brushstrokes in the background to give them less of a form feel and more of a feeling of other foliage behind these three flowers. This is the third and final painting in my series of testing out the different Gamvar varnishes, and this painting is varnished with the "matte varnish" - another full disclosure: I don't really like this varnish. I felt that it really dulled everything out and washed out the darker values that I had in the background compared to the flowers in the foreground, making them appear to be very similar in value. That being said, I'm still glad that I tried it out to see what it looks like - it even gives me vibes of those old 90's tween novel covers.

Hibiscus

4x4in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

My husband's grandmother's house has a border of hibiscus bushes and every year these beautiful white hibiscus flowers bloom. One day I caught sight of these flowers and fell in love with the way the warm sunlight shown on them and even shown through the petals. This is my second painting out of three to test out the three Gamvar varnishes, and this painting is varnished with the "satin varnish" - I like that this varnish causes less glare than the high gloss, but I find that it doesn't really punch up the colors and values like the high-gloss picture varnish does. It also leans more matte than the high gloss, so maybe in the future I will test out mixing half-gloss and half-satin mixtures.

Sunflower

 

4x4in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

Here in Nebraska you can find plenty of wild sunflower bushes everywhere in the months of August and September. There was a bush growing near my apartment complex and I just had to take some reference photos of them! There were so many birds and bees enjoying the flowers and the yellow petals looked so striking against the stark blue of the Midwest sky. I wanted to test out the three different Gamvar varnishes and I thought a floral series would be a nice change. This painting is varnished with the "picture varnish" - I like the high gloss look, just not too easy for a beginner like me to photograph. I think sunflowers may be my favorite flower!

Sunflowers & Roses

7x5in. oil on canvas panel - NSF, click to purchase prints here

Valentine's Day is a big celebration in my house due to my birthday being the following day. My husband always gets me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and I wanted to try my hand at my first-ever still life set up painting session! It was really difficult but it's such an important exercise. Excited to do more of these! 6/52

White Lilies from Papillion

 

7x5in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

White lilies are one of my favorite flowers. I love all of the different colors that they come in. This painting was particularly difficult for me to paint since the petals were white, but recently I learned a trick to painting all of the nuanced colors: put your photo into Photoshop and turn up the saturation a little bit. Don't worry, I know not to let my kitties loose around these toxic bad boys. I'd love to make a Silent Princess flower painting from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild! 2/52