Studio Log : Folk Florals, and a new painting
I’ve been wanting to do more botanical and floral patterns, and have been filling my sketchbook with lots of experiments with those subjects. My usual style, sort of a magical or psychedelic realism, is above, but I’ve been pushing myself to try to develop some folk-inspired styles as well.
These came in handy recently for Spoonflower’s Dark CottageCore challenge. I was very pleased with the result. You can see (and vote for) my entry here.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to capture the contrast of light and shadow in large shapes, the way Charles Burchfield and Edward Hopper do in their paintings. This sketch below probably doesn’t look like much, but I was trying to understand and capture the fall of the light on the rhododendron in my back yard. I have been experimenting with Derwent Inktense blocks on Karst stone paper, and quite like the results.
I decided to try to apply what I was learning to a painting. I took this botanical watercolor class on Domestika for inspiration, then began with swatching colors, before moving on to a painting of a tree frog in the rhubarb, which is still in progress. I’m want to push my paintings a little further into the realm of psychedelic or surrealism, but I don’t think I’ve got it where I want yet. I’ll share the finished painting on the next Studio Log.
