It's hard to take a break from painting except when the break is inspiring. We just returned from an amazing trip to Southeast Asia, where, in addition to the expected magnificent temples and terraced rice paddies, we also experienced our first total solar eclipse! We were rookies, but many people traveling with us have been chasing eclipses around the world for decades. Here's a photo of 'totality' when we could finally remove our special protective glasses and look at the eclipse with our naked eyes. Totality only lasted about two minutes but was definitely awesome!
Of course the temples were not disappointing, such as the Shwedegon Pagoda in Myanmar (shoes and socks are forbidden),
and Borobudur Temple, once swallowed up by the jungle, but now the number one tourist destination in Java, Indonesia.
We also saw marvelous sunsets, like this one in Lombok, Indonesia
and exotic wildlife like this komodo dragon who can smell prey from 2 kilometers away and has been known to include unlucky humans on its menu!
Although this memorable trip did take me away from my painting (and blogging), it was well worth it and will likely inspire many future paintings. But the time finally came to return to the ...
Flowers of Charlotte
As wonderful as it was in Southeast Asia, it was not too disappointing to return home to Charlotte. This is the best time of the year in Charlotte with trees and flowers blooming everywhere and with warm, pleasant weather without the heat and humidity we get later in the summer (and had everywhere in Southeast Asia!). It's the perfect time for me to talk about my paintings of flowers.
Large Peony
You've read previously that my painting Not Monet's Sunflowers was the first to incorporate my contextural style. However, the full contextural style was used only in the background of the painting, not for the sunflowers. It was time to try it on a painting of a flower itself.
I like the wonderful texture of peonies, so they were my first choice. I wanted the painting to be large enough to allow for the patterns to be easily visible, so I decided to use a 3 ft. by 4 ft. canvas. To help the flower stand out, I chose to paint a non-textured dark green background. The flower was to be the star, so the patterns on the leaves would be flatter and less textured than the flower. Here's a close-up of some of the leaves and background.
The peony had a vast range of colors ranging from white, to shades of pink, to deep reds, and was greatly textured with its myriad of small petals. The original pencil drawing of the flower was very challenging and took many days. The base layers of the flower were painted using light hues of the appropriate color for each individual petal. The patterns for each petal were then painted onto the base layers using darker, richer hues. Then dots were added on top of the patterns to complete the contextural effect for each petal. Here's a close-up of some of the petals.
The contextural style worked very well as the individual petals merged together to create the total flower.
The dark green background and the less textured leaves also worked well together to make the flower pop in the finished painting seen below.
Yellow Roses
After the success with Large Peony, I used a similar approach to paint some yellow roses. There weren't as many small individual petals on the roses, so there wasn't a need for as much detail, and a smaller 20" by 24" canvas was appropriate.
The roses were painted using lighter hues of yellow for the base layers of the petals, darker hues of yellow for the patterns on the petals, and a final layer of dots on top of these patterns. The yellow hues had more subtle differences than the pinks and reds had had in the peony, so to create more differentiation between the individual petals I decided to add a final layer of washes. I added a dash of black to the yellow washes to darken the areas in the deeper crevices and shadows of the flowers and used a more intense yellow wash to differentiate the more colorful petals.
You can almost feel the texture of the roses in the finished painting below.
Small Peony
I then painted a close-up of a smaller peony on a 16" by 20" canvas. This peony had fewer petals than the large peony and was more like the yellow roses. The painting also emphasized the flower's stalk with its small unopened bud among the leaves.
A darker non-textured background was painted to highlight the flower even more than in the previous works. The prominence of the leaves and stalk was increased by using darker green dots as the final layer on top of the patterns.
The flower and bud were painted using the same approach used for Yellow Roses. Richer colored patterns on top of lighter base layers, with lighter dots on the patterns. Darker washes were added as a final layer to emphasize the shadows and crevices of the flower in the finished painting shown below.
I was very satisfied with all three paintings and must conclude that contexturalism is a wonderful style for flowers!