Living among flowers
Somebody commented on my Facebook page that I live among flowers, grow flowers and paint them also. It’s a very floral life, indeed. While I do paint many other subjects also, flowers were always big part of live art classes and some solo exhibitions, as well. This post has very many pictures, enjoy!
Variety and choice
There is extreme variety of any kind of flowers, and they are available as a model all year round. They come in all possible colors and shades and shapes. They are of different sizes and allow for creating any type of art: from completely abstract, modern, to traditional, classic, botanical and photorealistic. The choice is endless. I’m always enjoying this subject and have drawn and painted many hundreds of flowers. I would not know the exact number, there are so many of such paintings.
Trying to be relaxed
I’m using this time period of COVID-19 pandemic as a vacation from many duties which I otherwise would have. It can feel sometimes lonely or not right, and I won’t have my annual trip to Europe to meet my closest family this year. However, I take things the easy and relaxed way: there is no point in rushing out and catching some virus-related problems or going mad about things which we didn’t ask for.
Upcoming changes
I am working on online materials, and I will definitely update the sale pages. For me personally, the toughest issue is to choose some plugin or sale app which suits me best. I have spent a few weeks already doing just that. I definitely don’t want to turn my website in a store, and I don’t want people to feel that the only way to enjoy art is by purchasing it. On the other hand, it’s been months since the last art sale and the last live art class which ensured a tiny, but nice income.
5 floral paintings
This post includes many flowers: I finished the sunflower, poppy and tulip paintings. The rose and magnolia were done a while ago, in March, I believe. iPhone 11 Max Pro is the best so far which I have had from smartphones. Still, the contrast is very strong, and it tends to turn any image bluer. For every post, like this one, I take about 100 to 300 pictures. Then I resize, straighten and crop them, add watermark the most suitable ones, and that takes me about 3 days in average. I would like to post more often, but I also don’t want the pictures and articles to be sloppy and esthetically unacceptable. I’m old school in that regard. I hate half-done unconvincing things and that goes for art also.
Conceptual no-skill art
By nowadays standards, everybody can be and is an artist. In fact, the newest contemporary art means, the best of it is created without any skill, without knowing anything about technique, drawing, painting or medium. One can use anything. Your kid or even your dog could create it, and it would possibly sell at more than $1,000 if you know how to market it. It can be 2 spots of some paint or even 2 pen lines, or a few words that are scribbled on some surface, anything goes as long as you can attach a concept for which it is best to be familiar with writing to invent the concept. Don’t believe me? Check out Artsy.
Enjoy the art
3 of these flower paintings are semi-realistic: poppies, sunflower and rose, and traditionally realistic: magnolia and tulips. I grouped them together because of their size and canvas shape which is square for 4 paintings. Only sunflower painting is vertical, but one dimension is the same: 12 inches or 30.5 cm. For North American population, that means the size is a square foot. I always paint around edge because that way the sides become continuation of painting, and it looks great without a frame.
I’d be happy to sell some of floral paintings, you’ll find them soon on art sale pages. It will take more work, however, and I haven’t uploaded them even onto print sale sites yet. They are coming soon.
Other posts about my floral art:
FAA prints:
Very refreshing 😍 loved the greens for both backgrounds.
Thank you!
They were painted in different periods. I sometimes use the same background for a few related paintings, but it felt right to apply variations of that. I often use black to create green color, that ads the softness to it and takes off the edge. Sometimes strong green feels right. The only color I do not like too much is aqua shades and phtalo green or phtalo blue. It just doesn’t work with me. Just as I rarely use Ultramarine, here and there for fall landscapes, but not that much.
Wow that’s great, thank for sharing the details on that. Good to know how you use black to get softness.
Black or grey usually neutralize too spicy colors. I think, it’s important to explore what one can get using just a few colors, plus black and white.
Yeah it’s definitely a challenge painting Or achieving results using fewer colors.
You can mix up anything from 3 primary colors plus black and white. I add yellow ocker, burnt sienna and burnt umber, I use these also for some greens, grey and all kinds of other shades. 2 yellows, 2 reds and 2 blue shades are necessary, though, each cold and warm.
I think it’s not difficult, but I’ve been painting for more than 40 years.
40 years of experience with painting is a huge deal. Thank you for sharing your tips as always they are very helpful.
I hope so.
I started out very early. Nobody paints in my family, but I just went outside and started drawing. I didn’t have even any good paper or other supplies. That was 55 years ago approximately. I look younger, but I am past 60.
My art is very much based on drawing because I didn’t use camera which I didn’t have until 2005, or computer which didn’t exist back then. Therefore, I can draw anything very fast just looking at it and that moved over to painting. Currently, the contemporary, digital, abstract and other types of wide-spread art which sometimes is anything, but art, is very different from what I do and have always done. That is observation or using imagination and then re-creating it on paper or canvas.
I’ve got way too many paintings, and I sometimes don’t even know where they are. It’s probably time to turn to teaching again.
You definitely look younger from your profile picture. You are a very dedicated artist. Glad to meet you!
I think I look now better even than in that picture which was taken some 4 years ago. I spend a lot of time outdoors, working, moving.
I got extremely nice cosmetics as a gift a while ago and more recently more of the good stuff. It shows when one uses something like that.
I have never been able to do only art, but it is still art mostly at least for the last 10 years. It’s interesting to do more than just one thing, one has to do everything they feel attracted to in order not to regret later.
I have lots of insight in medical area and medical research which I worked in for more than 3 decades. The proof of good nutrition skills is that I never changed my size after I was 21. I am rather slim and tall and that helps.
Just beautiful.
Thank you!
I loved the red and pink tones on a subtle green background!
Large flowers in acrylic take time to paint and usually require many layers. Over time, quality of acrylic paints has gotten noticeably worse, therefore, we need layers in order to achieve some particular color or color balance. Internet doesn’t always show true colors, that is especially difficult with shades of red and yellow, but, anyway, they look very good on a wall.
Thanks for your nice comment!
That’s an interesting tip, thank you!
My pleasure! Looking forward to more of your paintings!
I’m glad you can use it.
I’ve been painting for 5 decades, so, I have lots of suggestions.
I’m slow with responses and probably will be for the next 2 weeks since we have a renovation and I cannot even get to computer or check out anything. It’s horrible.