Painting Started

Here is a new painting I started this week. I just love peonies and paint them whenever possible. I'm going to have to find a new subject at some point. Anyway, this is going to be my last "dark" painting. I've decided I want to painting lighter backgrounds for a change even though the dark backgrounds really make the subject vibrant. I bought these beautiful peonies off the side of the road outside of Salem New Jersey. There was a flower farmer who had buckets of these flowers on the side of the road-- 12 flowers for $3.50 -- what? They are normally $3-5 a stem around here. I bought 1 1/2 dozen, bought a bucket and a gallon of water from Walmart and they took the trek home with me to VA. I immediately set them up in different draping positions over this beautiful antique tea box. See photo.

I've decided to do an underpainting of very thin color before putting on the next layers. One of the key things I've figured out with painting flowers is that the centers must be really saturated and intense in color. You then put on the duller or lighter colors and that intense color bleeds through to make the flower more realistic and three-dimensional. Thecenter peonies, for example, are really white but they have an incredible yellow hue and orange center that I hope will come through in the finished painting. I love the energy in this painting...now watch me kill it :-( I'll post progression photos as I go along.