Ikebana 3 - Yellow Chrysanthemums palette knife painting in oils

Ikebana 3 - Yellow Chrysanthemums

Palette knife oil painting on canvas panel

18x24 cm (approx 7x10 inch)

 I wanted to explore a dramatic background in this painting and use a different colour combination than my norm. It's good to try something different now and again to keep the paintings 'fresh'. I really like how this one turned out
Visit the first two paintings of the quartet, Ikebana 1 and Ikebana 2

Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

Peach Rose oil painting - Day 22, 30 days hath September challenge

Peach Rose

Oil palette knife painting

15x15cm (6"x6") on gessoed panel

Day 22, 30 days hath September challenge

 I had a fancy to paint roses today, so chose a small piece of prepared MDF with a pink ground. This is my first palette knife rose and is a study for a larger piece. In the last rose I painted I uses a gentle blending technique and I'm finding that I have to stop myself blending too much as I still want the impasto look.
Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

White Hydrangeas

Summer is a pretty dry time in my garden. After the beautiful flush of flowers in June and sometimes goes into July, the garden dries out and the flowers go into a sort of hibernation. They usually rejuvenate again in September and give me a second flush of colour.

I made a mistake this year with my white hydrangeas, I cut them almost to ground level. I was reading the instructions and merrily went ahead. It was only when I had finished I discovered that I was reading the wrong label and should not have pruned them at all! I was so annoyed with myself. I did get a few flowers but nothing that matched their splendour last year.
Here is a painting from last year that shows how big these hydrangea flowers get:

White Hydrangeas

Oil on canvas panel

30x30cm

This painting is for sale on Dailypaintworks HERE

Orange Delight oil painting

Orange Delight Oil Painting by Marion Hedger

Orange Delight by Marion Hedger

24cmx18cm oil on canvas board

I have a gerbera plant growing in a garden pot for the last 4 years or so. It produces these vibrant blooms each year, although it gets so little attention.  I placed one in a faceted triangular vase which I really like - although the shapes and reflections were hard to paint. I placed the vase on some old stripey curtain fabric. The challenge on Daily Paintworks that week was "stripes".
This is part of my garden 101 daily painting series.
Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

Peach Amaryllis in soft pastels

  Peach Amaryllis painting by Marion Hedger

40x50cm (16"x20") soft pastels on sanded card

Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

This painting is from a photo I took at a local village flower festival, where the entire village was decked out in flowers including all the rooms in the chateau. These amarylis were hanging up-side-down along the large sweeping staircase - a truly breathtaking display.

Bronze Slipper Orchid oil painting

Bronze Slipper Orchid with dew drops by Marion Hedger

46x55cm oils on narrow box canvas

The photo for this was taken at Park Pheonix, Nice, France a couple of weeks ago. I've tried to portray the waxy leaves on this one. I uses a blending technique to represent those shiny leaves, with some glazing with undiluted paint on some areas.

Stay tuned for more orchid paintings, as this is one of my favourite subjects.

Magnolia Grandiflora á la Georgia Oil Painting

Magnolia Grandiflora á la Georgia

Oil painting by Marion Hedger

50x50x1cm (20"x20")

Oil on boxed canvas - no need for a frame

This was painted as part of a challenge on wetcanvas.com floral forum. The challenge was to paint magnolias in the style of Georgia O'Keefe. It was quite a fun challenge and certainly challenging. How did I do?

Slipper Orchid oil painting

Slipper Orchid painting by Marion Hedger

40x40cm (16"x16") on black gessoed box canvas

This was painted in response to the wetcanvas.com floral forum monthly challenge. I used my own reference taken at Montreal Botanical Gardens a couple of years ago. I used a blending technique where I placed the paint onto the canvas and then used a soft brush to blend that paint together. It was painted alla prima apart from the 'spots' which were added once it was fairly dryish.
Here are some Work in Progress pics

Gridding and outline drawing - no details at this stage

 Underpainting in acrylics - lights using warm colours and shadows using cool colours. This acts as a guide for the highlights and shadows

Starting on applying the oil paint

Close-up of the paint before blending

After this stage I used a soft brush to blend the paint. Sometimes adding more paint if needed. I stopped taking photos as I got so caught up in the painting process.
I used very little pure white until the final highlights, but added a small amount of yellow ochre pale and/or pink just to tint the white.
I am used to using a lot of scumbling rather than a blending technique. This was an interesting process. The blending process takes a lot longer than the application of paint and it is interesting to feel the painting come to life.

Red Poppy on Black

Red Poppy on Black by Marion Hedger
30x30cm Acrylic on box canvas

NFS but commissions accepted

I painted this for my Mum on her 80th birthday as poppies were her favourite flower.

I started with a black gessoed canvas, roughly sketched in the flower and then started scumbling in white paint for the highlights. After obtaining the basic shape plus shadow areas, I used a yellow for the brightest part of the petals followed by red. I used a scumbling technique throughout varying the layers. The shadow areas were left quite lightly scumbled, with more or less pressure depending on the extent of the shadow.

Some of my Zazzle product featuring this painting:

Red Poppy on black Mouse Mat by Marionsart
Browse more Poppy Mousepads

Poppy cut out by Marionsart
View other Poppy T-Shirts

Bronze Iris - Oil painting

Bronze Beauty

30x60cm
Oil on box canvas

by Marion Hedger

This is on my easel at the moment. Not sure if it is finished so need to look with fresh eyes tomorrow.

Here, in Provence, Irises are king at this time of year. This is one that I planted a couple of years ago from a small rhizome. It looks wonderful in real life with a beautiful colour that changes from almost black through to a red purple and a red bronze with orange highlights depending on the light. I have tried to capture some of that colour and I really enjoyed painting it.