Abstract Orchid

This is a semi-abstract painting of an orchid. It's oil on 20"x26" stretched canvas.

This painting was done at Anastasia Art. Oxana wanted us to do abstract paintings on flowers. I was a bit lost. I could paint a realistic flower, but I had no idea even where to begin to paint an abstract flower. Then when I visited San Francisco a couple of months ago, I checked out a Georgia O'Keeffe book from the library. Georgia O'Keeffe had a done quite a few abstract flowers, and she basically enlarged the flowers so big that people had to look at her painting closely to figure out what she was painting. So I thought, I would pull a "Georgia O'Keeffe" on the orchid.

I wanted the flower really big, but I wanted the center of the flower to be off-centered. So I put it around the "golden ratio" spot. I started with an underpainting in lemon yellow and brilliant pink, diluted with turpentine, and painting the first layer like a water painting. Then I gradually built it up with more paint. The center of the flower needed to have more more intense color and more texture. The texture was done with a palette knife and very thick paint. This particular orchid had beautiful veins, so to showcase that, I also used palette knife for the veins.

After a couple of months, I'm finally done! I'm glad the color turned out quite brilliant. I look forward to doing more interesting things at Anastasia Art after the summer.