Summer Containers - Colorful Petunias

Summer Containers - Colorful Petunias by Marion Hedger

5x7 inch on gallery wrapped canvas

Oil painting, painted with a palette knife

 Purchase details

A companion piece to my last post Fuchsia basket. This is painted from life. The local nursery always have some baskets planted up early in the season. I couldn't resist and bought 3 for the carport and front entrance. It is a nice sunny spot and they flourish there. Elsewhere I will have to wait a little longer.

There is something therapeutic about painting these small paintings full of colour. I am definitely 'in the zone' mixing the colours and playing (sorry carefully considering) with the placement of colour and what will work with what.

Summer Colour, container flowers oil painting

Summer Colours, Container flower painting

Oil Palette knife painting

25x30cm (10"x12") on box canvas (gallery wrapped)

The edges are painted black.

I was very good this year and potted up my containers early. My reward is a beautiful, colourful display on my patio.

Some close-ups of the palette knife work

Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

Container Colour garden flowers oil painting

 Container colour

18x24cm (approx 7"x10")

Oil on MDF canvas panel

Started paitning using a brush and finished with a palette knife

 Another painting of my container plants. This one has some lovely coral coloured pelargoniums (trailing geraniums). I wondered how I was going to translate that wonderful colour in paint. After deliberating which red to use, it turned out to be quite simple. With my last order of paints I purchased some Scarlet Lake, a colour I had never used before. When I mixed it with white, the perfect coral hues appeared.

Here are some WIP photos.
Step 1 - I used a red ground, which in hindsight was the wrong choice. Something that contrasted with the coral would have been better and would have made it easier to give the coral colour more pizazz.

I used a thin wash of paint to block in the local colours.

Step 2
More colour and thicker paint added trying to define the lights.

Step 3
In step 3 involved using more of the palette knife and adding more shadow and highlights using thicker paint for the highlights. I also added more breathing space to the upright geraniums and lightened the background. Unfortunately I was so involved in painting I forgot to take a photo.
 
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I painted some of my container geraniums last year. See HERE and HERE

Pink Geraniums oil painting

 Pink Geraniums Container Plant by Marion Hedger

Oil on canvas panel, 17x24 cm (approx 7"x11")

These pink geraniums - or should I say pelargoniums? - are part of my container garden that brightesn up my back patio area in the summer. Because we have such dry summers, it is hard to have anything flowering as most of the plants go into a dormant stage. So I plant up a lot of containers to brighten the barbeque area. It's a win win situation as they are also lovely to paint.

Part of my Garden 101 series.

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Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

Summer Bonanza Oil painting

This is another one of my loosening up exercises, this time base on one of Richard Schmid's work.

Summer Bonanza after Richard Schmid by Marion Hedger
Oil on canvas
41x33cm (16x13")

I started with an acrylic wash in pale blue. Then using a 1" wash brush, I brushed in some loose, random stipes using red oxide diluted with odourless mineral spirits, followed by a few loose brushstrokes of green. With a very small brush I then indicated the position of the main flowers and then went straight to using thicker paint. I tend to work all over the canvas, mixing my colours as I go and also on the canvas. The final stage was the highlights on the rose to make it pop. This was painted alla prima apart from the intial acrylic wash.

My next step is to use my own photos as the basis and see if I can keep the momentum going without getting too tight.