A Riot of Flowers

It's a beautiful painting and what patience you must have I hope you are pleased with it.

I agree with Joy: I envy your patience. Beautiful details in the flowers!

And I can see why!! Wonderful botanical painting. I love the way you have arranged the flowers to ensure that the colours blend together and present the most harmonious and balanced grouping. This, for me, adds to the appeal of this exquisite painting.

Thank you for your comments. This painting was quite interesting to do because it was totally different in approach from anything I had done before. I had been watching a video of Elizabeth Blackadder painting flowers and found it fascinating. She didn't set up an arrangement first and then paint it but just took one flower at a time and painted it anywhere on a huge sheet of paper and then slowly added others, one by one, making up the composition as she went along. She said she had no idea in her head of how it would turn out when she started but liked to be surprised at the end! So that's what I did. You have to concentrate hard and if you paint a flower and don't like the effect there's nothing you can do to change it's position on the paper. Logistically it's easier than painting a still life arrangement though, as you can take as long as you want because, as you only do one flower at a time the others won't fade. That's why, on this picture, there are flowers from different seasons. The tulips were out when I started but they had long since gone when I finished and the roses were out instead. I have since considered doing another painting in the same way and taking a year with two flowers from every month!

Fantastic painting, fantastic idea. Like it!

What you have to be careful of is to do mainly just flower heads to begin with because, if you paint leaves and stalks as well in the beginning, you will find there's a stalk or something painted where you want to put the next flower. Of course, this only applies in watercolour - with oil or acrylic you'd just paint over it.

I love the flowers, beautifully painted. Your other painting with the cats brought to my mind E. Blackadder. I love her paintings too.

Yes - as I said in post #4 above, Elizabeth Blackadder was the inspiration for the method of doing the above painting and she was also the inspiration for the earlier painting of flowers and cats. I teach art classes and each term I have a different theme for my lessons. This last term the theme has been "The Work of Elizabeth Blackadder R.A." and all my students have painted flowers, using her method, and cats and flowers etc.