Fortune’s Garden

This is a garden  scene that is relatively close up. It is not a panorama that shows distant mountains and fields so there is not a lot of depth. When I first painted it, there was something a little off. I looked at it for a week and then realized it just looked like a wall of flowers. I then added some darker areas toward the back to show som parts that pushed  back some of the foliage and it worked.

Garden Club

This painting started as a demo for a local garden club a few weeks ago. It was before the current situation of the coronavirus and seems like a different world away. I chose colors that were harmonious to each other in shades of red and coral..I started with a background that was painted  red and I used transparent oil paints as a first layer. The next layer consisted of opaque colors  blended with the transparent colors.

Fortune’s Garden

I think garden scenes are my favorite scenes to paint. There is always something new to see every time you look at a garden view; whether it is a new flower that just bloomed or a newly sprouted vine. This garden is part meadow, part garden and just on the edge of being wild. It is as if it might have been on the verge of totally returning to nature.

Your Song

I love red  as the the main color in a floral arrangement , especially with a white background. I didn't draw the flowers first, I started with a red underpainting and just added different shapes of flowers, ending with leaf shapes until the composition was balanced. The white background was added last as a negative space.

In The Vicinity

Color could be the most important thing about a painting.It is usually the first thing one notices about a painting; more so than the actual drawing of the painting. The colors chosen for this painting are analagous or neighboring colors. That means colors that are close to each other on the color wheel- they are more harmonious .

Believe The Story

I did a painting demo for a local garden club yesterday. I painted  something similar to this painting
for the demo. I explained the style as a kind of abstract impressionism learned from the many different workshops I have attended. This painting was started without a drawing; just shapes  of color that developed from a composition that I had sketched out on a piece of paper. I really love this type of loose painting style  because I never know exactly where it is going.