Flower Studies in Oils

I have recently started using oils after joining an oil painting group each Friday. I have found that I really like the feel of painting with oils and it is fast becoming my favourite medium. I still have much to learn and so far I have only painted (not quite) alla prima.
I was hesitating how to start, and in the end decided just to go for it. Here are a couple of the flower studies that I did and are my first attempt at florals in oils.

Cosmos Fancies by Marion Hedger

20x20cm (8"x8")

Oil on canvas board

Poppy Stance by Marion Hedger

20x20cm (8"x8")

Oil on canvas board

Poppy madness

After completing my poppy medley, I had the urge to paint more poppies. I gave myself a stern lecture and insisted I finish some half finished paintings first before starting something new.

Red poppies on black
I started this one a couple of months ago. It is in oil pastel and I wanted to see if I could portray poppies in oil pastel. I love painting them in soft pastel and I have also painted them  in watercolour and acrylic. This is from one of my own photographs of poppies in my garden here in France. I let them self seed every year and as I don't do much weeding they reward me with a wonderful show every year.

RED POPPIES ON BLACK
30x40 cm, oil pastel on Somerset Velvet paper.

The blue stands out a little too much in the photo, although I have reduced it in photshop. It's difficult photographing art work on black paper, if anyone knows of any good tips on how to do it, please let me know. The paper is a lovely paper to work on. It is a printing paper and works well for soft pastel as well as for oil pastels. It has a soft 'springy' surface and takes a lot of wear and tear.

Orange Glory
This is the second one I finished. It is a rework of a failed watercolour painting.

ORANGE GLORY
30X40cm oil pastels on watercolour paper.

This is also from one of my own photos but from my English garden taken about 5 years ago.

I learnt a lot about oil pastels with this painting. I was having trouble with it and thought I had spoilt it completely. But because I left it alone for a while, when I came back to it I was able to over work it with quite a few more layers and even completely change the shape of the bottom poppy.

I'd be interested in your opinions on these as I quite like the way the turned out although I did wonder if oil pastels was too heavy a medium for the subject.


I had fun creating some art gifts on zazzle

Orange Glory floral Mouse Mat by artbymarion
See more Poppies Mousepads

Poppies on Black Poster by artbymarion
Poster printing by zazzle.co.uk

Poppy Medley

Poppy Medley 30x30cm coloured pencil on sanded card.

 

This painting is from the May Plant Parade challenge on Wet Canvas. I cropped one of the photos and painted the underpainting in my usual way but this time using water solouble neopastel and water to  cover the paper. I have used the neopastels for the under painting on several oil pastel paintings and it works well for me.

 Initially I planned to do this painting in oil pastels, but something made me decide to use coloured pencil which I hadn't used for quite a while.
I sharpened my pencils and set to work on stage 2 - making the colours look 'real'

 This is the stage where it starts to look more like the objects. I decided that I need more of this 'colouring' stage and here is stage 2.2

Definitely starting to look like flowers now!
Stage 3 is finding the changes in plane and lights and shadows on the petals by dividing the larger masses into smaller masses.

The light through the petals is starting to show.

Stage 4 is more of the same - splitting the masses and really looking at the colours and pushing them and putting in that all important centre of the main poppy.
I enjoyed painting this one and the coloured pencils worked well on the sanded paper which did not use up the pencils as much as I thought they would.