The inspiration for this piece was
our garden. It was in full bloom, and as I took in the
beauty I knew I had to do a piece on flowers and nature. The
quote is from Ralph W. Emerson.
For this piece I had
a difficult time deciding on a layout. Actually, I did not
like anything I came up with. The only thing I knew was that
I wanted flowers at the bottom of the piece. So, this is
where I began. I worked from the bottom up; something I have
never done before.
After spray fixing the black
paper, I began using colored pencils to draw in the flowers
(which took forever!). I made a transparency of my pencil
drawn letters from my exemplar and began tracing the words
on the black paper. My first word was “flowers”. I did not
trace the word ‘in’, as I did not like the way it looked
(using the transparency). I left space for the word “in”. I
continued up the line. When all words were traced in, I
under painted them with Acrylic paint mixed with a Matte
Medium. I chose the color blue green because I love this
color. |
I had to lighten it from the pure hue
because it was too dark to show upon the black paper.
Painting the letters was very slow and tedious. I could only
paint two letters at a time before taking a much needed
break.
I still had to figure out what to do about the
word “in”. Since it was in between “laughs and flowers” I
needed something about “earth” to tie everything together. I
decided to draw a little bug for the “i” and a bean plant
turned upside down for the “n”. This is what I wanted.
Now I had to figure out what to put at the top of the
piece. Originally I wanted more flowers. I decided that
would be overkill. I needed something. I chose a little
butterfly and a single tiny flower looking down over the
piece. They are also done in colored pencils.
One
thing I have learned is this... it is a good idea to take a
photo of the layout prior to actually painting etc. The
photo, for some reason, emphasizes mistakes that the human
eye can miss.
I had fun working on this homework. It
was very arduous and time consuming. I had such inspiration
from my husband’s garden that it turned out to be very
rewarding in the end. |
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