When a peony has a unique history of how it came to be, you know that it’s a tale worth telling.
As you may know already, I absolutely adore flowers!! I believe watercolour is especially good at bringing out the dainty elegance of flowers.
As a painter, for me, it’s not so much about capturing the botanical accuracy of every flower as much as its about painting the essence and experience each flower. Before painting most flowers, I ask myself, what does this flower remind me of and how does this flower make me feel?
It is for this reason that I love painting peonies. I love the delicate petals with their myriad shades of colour, even within each petal. I love the wispy beauty that they represent with a particular love for the scented ones.
This is why I love following Vin on social media… her flower photos and videos make you feel that you’re stood right by them.
Vin and I crossed paths on Instagram. I admired her flower photos and she loved my flower paintings!! I especially admired her ability to take photographs which showed off the features and details of the flowers and with great compositions. So I was overjoyed when Vin allowed me to paint one of her beautiful tree peonies. Her photos are every artist’s dream reference images.
Coming back to the origins of this plant, it’s a sweet story, how this one came to live in the garden.
One day, she found this little plant was growing in the middle of her lawn. The mother plant was also in her garden, but somehow two little baby plants had found itheir place in the middle of the grass. Thankfully, Virginia being the expert gardener that she is, scooped this little one out and gave it a proper place in the garden. The other was given to a friend.
Now, of course, it’s grown to produce these beautiful pink blooms.
As Virginia had many good photos, I was spoilt for choice. Selecting the photo which was taken in strong sunlight also meant that the shadows were able to define the form well and made this flower so much more interesting to look at and to paint. It did so much justice to the true vibrancy of the peony too!
Pink is not just a pretty colour. There are so many variations of it in this one flower. You will notice pastel pink, dark pink, hot pink, magenta, violet, maroon, purple and even some blue! And I’m not sure if I’ve covered them all!!
As you can see, I first did a rough painting of the peony in my sketchbook, just to give ,yself the advantage of knowing which colours to use and finding the composition that would work well. The rough painting benefits Vin too, as this was the opportunity for her to tell me of any changes she thought that needed making, especially with the final piece in mind. It’s an effective way of avoiding disappointments and ensuring that her vision and mine are the same.
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Although the reference photo did not have many darks at the bottom, we made an artistic decision to continue the dark at the top all the way to the bottom. I just felt that it held the flower pop even more. I hope you’ll agree with me on that one.
This was a joint decision and Virginia also asked if there could be a much more stronger pink throughout the flower- "to capture that luminous pink quality".
Fast forward to actually painting the flower, I went to my local art shop and got a piece of high quality watercolour paper - 100% cotton. I cut it to size and started painting. It was then that I noticed that the paint did not sty where I put it with my brush! It was spreading everywhere on the paper. I thought that maybe this paper was old. I continued to persevere for a goof half hour, when I decided that something was definitely wrong about this paper!!!
That was when I decided to call the art shop. They found that someone had put the wrong paper on the shelf and I was in fact painting on blotting paper!!
That totally explained what had happened! After a good laugh and half a day’s work gone with the wind, I got a new piece of 100% cotton paper - only the best quality. Thankfully Vin was very understanding too.
And slowly this beautiful peony emerged out of the paper adding that dark background just finished it off really well and put the spotlight on the flower even more.
I generally like to paint petal by petal, especially when the object is to highlight the natural beauty of the flower. In this case, I really had to pay attention to all the little creases and folds in the shadows when painting.
Ultramarine blue for the shadow areas worked a treat for this beauty. Permanent rose, magenta and bright red were used to achieve the different shades of pink in the petals. I had applied mask on the stamens in the mid=ddle, so, it was just a case of removing them and dabbing a little light yellow over them. To too detailed, but enough to convey the idea of the flower centre.
The leaves of the peony and the shadows of the leaves were drawn first and then painted. The darker background, was painted wet on dry with a juicy brush and rich paint in one layer.
After fine tuning the painting and adjusting minor details and after checking that Vin and myself were happy with the painting, we were finally at the point of deciding on how to display the painting.
I normally either send paintings framed (or unframed, if international) or mounted on a wooden panel, so it can be hung like a canvas.
As Vin was not sure what she was going to do, I fixed the painting with a spray to fix the paint and give it UV protection. After this, the painting was waxed with three layers of cold wax that ensured that it was waterproof and gave a soft sheen too.
I posted this painting by special delivery, once the layers of wax had cured, I sent it away and Vin received it the next afternoon!
And guess what?! We named the painting she commissioned as ‘Baby’. So that the story of how it came to be, would not be forgotten.
Below are VIN’s thoughts on actually holding the finished painting in her hands.
“Hello Pradeepa, yes it came, about 15 minutes ago, beautifully packaged and some extras as well! It’s very lovely so I’m much pleased, it is nice to have one of my favourite flowers painted and so can be seen all year round! So I’ll put my thinking cap on about how to display ‘Baby’ ….. So once again many thanks I’m very happy with the time and love you have put into bringing baby to life in those cold dull days! “(Edited for clarity)
It was a joy to make this piece of high quality, unique art for the lovely Vin! It was even more fulfilling because I was able to paint this for her in winter and will bring her so much happiness for many winters and summers to come.
If you have a special idea in your mind, then please do contact me: pradeepa@limewoodart.com. Let us bring your dream art alive together.
If you enjoyed reading this, please do let me know your thoughts in the comments.