{Adding some shading to the yellow gerberas on Keri’s Bridal Bouquet}
Don’t you just get lost in that middle gerbera? I do. I love how the light hits some of the petals and how the shading creates a depth to it.
This is my view when I paint. I sit on my chair, indian style and with my face only a foot away from the canvas. Sometimes when I’m doing very detailed work my nose almost touches the painting!
{I’ve shared photos of the final painting and a few from early on in the process. Here’s some more mid-way through of this happy bridal bouquet painting.}
After getting to a comfortable point with the bouquet, I started adding the background color. I had emailed back and forth with Keri and knew she wanted her wedding color as the background color. I had some great photos to go by and think I nailed it (you got to celebrate when you can!).
As you can see from the above photo, I added a darker outline to the bouquet in a different shade of blue. After I added the darker detail, I went back with the lighter paint to get a good balance of the two and until the darker color easily blended into the lighter layer. The darker details are only visable when you view it up-close, and from a far, you only see a darker shadow hinting around the bouquet which creates a nice depth to the painting. Both of the light blue and darker blue colors are mixes of several different colors to get the right match.
Believe it or not, this little extra detail took me several hours to do. Luckily I was catching up on Once Upon A time on Hulu.com. Any fans out there?
Once the background was complete, I added a nice clean border to all the flower petals. I do this to all the petals, not just the ones close to the background color. It’s very tedious, as you can imagine.
It’s amazing how many different shades of the main colors created this painting. Love this palette.
Check out the final photos of this painting and others here, and check out the bridal bouquet section if you’d like information on how to order a commission.
xo,
e.
