Thursday, June 24, 2010

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.

1 comment:

  1. Rebecca,
    I found your blog from the Rookie Painter challenge. I wanted to paint the clothespins and just love how you handled the reference photo.
    This Mother and child is marvelous. The skin tones have such depth. Thank you for sharing your pallet.
    Phil

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