Here’s a new project I’ve been working on. I began it a few weeks ago with a drawing.
I’d been watching a few videos by Suzanne Allard. Suzanne paints florals and abstracts in a bold, free, colorful style. I did a few pieces inspired by her work. One was a cat with florals dotting the background and the other was parakeets in colorful tropical foliage. My purpose in this one, though, was to incorporate what I’d learned from Suzanne - and what had inspired me about her work - into my own style.
Drawing the fox and sparrow was my comfort zone, but I knew I’d be going beyond it with the florals. And the challenge would be to move the florals more towards my style. I’m happy with the way I portray animals, but I’d need to modify the kinds of florals I’d been painting under Suzanne’s influence to fit with these two more realistic animals.
The first stage was painting the background. I used acrylic paint with drops of alcohol inks. I’m used to combining abstract backgrounds with realistic animals, so this part wasn’t a stretch.
Then it was time to paint the fox.
I was quite surprised when I began to paint. The surface texture wasn’t what I was used to and the paint was going on differently than I’d expected.
Turns out that instead of spraying the drawing with workable fixative then adding a coat of acrylic matt gel medium, I added a coat of clear gesso over the fixative. What a difference!
Most obvious was the tooth. It had been helpful with the acrylic background, as the paint covered very well with the tooth on the surface. But painting the fox with transparent washes was so different! I got used to it pretty quickly though. At this point, I can’t really say which I like better: painting over the matt gel medium or over the clear gesso. Maybe I should do a side-by-side comparison, but to tell you the truth, that sounds way too structured for me.
Anyway, with the fox painted, I could proceed with drawing the flowers. For this, I used a book of floral references which Suzanne had recommended. I find myself drawn to ranunculus, poppies, and anemones. They don’t bloom at the same time of year, but that’s a “problem” artistic license solves quite neatly!
So, here’s where I am now. I’m quite eager to continue, but I have another project that has a deadline, so I won’t have a lot of time to work on my fox this week.
Anyway, after drawing the flowers, I painted them with a coat of gesso. I didn’t want super opaque and even white, but in some places where the underlying paint (or, more often, the alcohol ink) was too strong, I needed two coats. Then I drew in some of the details of the flower interiors to prepare for painting them.
In the end, these florals won’t be nearly as detailed as the fox or the sparrow. But I’m hoping they will be sufficiently realistic to create a harmonious painting.
BTW, I haven’t painted all the stems, which is why they’re more prominent on the left side than on the right. I added all the little chamomile blossom because I thought I needed some smaller flowers. I simply added centers with Nova Color II water-soluble crayons then painted the petals around them, then decided where the stems should go. I suspect there may be more of these tiny flowers in the end, but we’ll see!
BTW II Painting those flower stems accentuated a down side (at least for me) of the clear gesso. That tooth made it harder to get a nice, thin line with my liner brush.
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