Simple Floral Compositions
In last month's post I talked about small simple compositions --- various still life objects, with or without flowers. This blog will be a continuation of that same conversation, but focused more specifically on simple floral arrangements that are basically a vignette of just flowers. While there are many formulaic techniques out there for painting flowers (and everything else) the guidelines here are geared more for people who are going for the same thing I'm after, which is capturing the light and depth. Keep in mind that as it is with traditional still life compositions, even a small amount of planning can up your chances of success rather dramatically.
Directly below you'll find some examples I created as suggestions for my online course.
Here are the objectives I was going for as I set these up;
1) Good lighting. This doesn't have to mean any special type of light but rather lighting that helps show off the structure of the flower. In a school- type situation with many students and a lot of spotlights right on top of the arrangements, this can present a challenge, but good lighting should be easier to achieve in a home studio if you know what to look for. The most problematic thing about composing with flowers is that many petals are translucent and light easily travels though them, so arranging the lighting in a such way that will translate well into paint can be sort of tricky. My attempt in creating these arrangements was to stick with form lighting that highlights the front of the bouquet but is also off to one side so there are some distinct shadows. In each of these arrangements there are one or more flowers positioned in such a way that they are directly in the path of the light and the big basic light and shadow patterns are hanging together. The high key values of some of the flowers in each arrangement help make the light and shadow patterns easier to observe. In these situations the light coming through the petals is relatively subdued, so the translucency can be handled in the same way as a reflected light on a solid object and remain as a part the shadow.
2) Solid, evenly colored flowers will give better opportunities to observe the planes and larger value patterns. Many different types of flowers will have a gradual change of color toward the center, and those are fine, but the more abrupt and dramatic patterns found on a lot of lilies in particular can be difficult to look past, so they make it challenging to distinguish the more subtle value transitions that help things read well in terms of depth. Rubrum Lilies are just one example where you can see very dramatic changes of color within every petal. Yes, they are pretty...but I would suggest mastering the light and shade on a plain lily before trying to paint ones with a slash of Permanent Rose or Magenta down the middle of each petal.
3) As I mentioned in last month's post, experience has taught me that it will be easier to achieve some measure of harmony if I don't include every color in the rainbow in a composition. Rarely do I set up a arrangement where a strong color isn't balanced or represented in other areas of the picture plane.
4) Overlapping similar flowers helps create more interesting edges and a flow throughout the composition. I avoid having a flower as the center of interest where it's totally surrounded by starkly contrasting values, since that can create a situation where that blossom will look cut out and isolated from everything around it. While strong contrast along part of the silhouette will help convey depth and promote a strong center of interest, at the same time I want to convey some mystery and a sense of every flower being a part of the same bouquet.
This photo of a bouquet with orange day lilies shows the arrangement I was working with for one of the demonstration videos in my online course. I hurriedly gathered these from my backyard garden right before filming and only years later noticed that on the main flower, one of it's petals must have fallen off. Day Lilies typically have 6 petals, but... oh well...more character! If anyone else ever noticed they never said anything to me. A few step-by-step photos of the painting as it progressed are posted below.
To my mind, working with a simple bouquet of flowers is relatively forgiving as compared to the drawing issues with something like a bottle or glass that is symmetrical and needs to appear sitting upright, grounded to the table. However, the time I've spent trying to teach a thoughtful approach to painting flowers has convinced me that a lot of people are intimidated by being face to face with all of those petals. Their brain tells them it will take a lot of strokes so the overwhelming temptation is to jump right in and do just that -- put down a lot of brushstrokes really fast, willy-nilly, and hope for the best. A more solid approach is to look past the petals to the basic structure. Picturing the flower and it's fundamental shape as a cup, bowl, plate or cone can be enormously helpful in observing and simplifying the patterns of light and shade. If you can get the big notes of light and shadow on your canvas correctly and then approximate the silhouette, much of what you need to convey the illusion of that flower is already there and your biggest challenge is not messing that up. What I'm aiming for in my work is more of a Sargent-like portrait of a flower, where those basic elements are carrying the story and in the interest of preserving the strength of the light, many of the details such as individual petals are suggested rather than clearly defined. Rather than getting caught up in small forms and insignificant value changes I try to stay with the planes that help describe the form and pay close attention to the interruptions in the silhouette unique to that particular blossom that reveal it's character. Clearly defining every petal might be the goal for a botanical illustrator, so I'm not suggesting there's a one-size-fits-all approach to painting flowers, but this is an area where having a clear mental image of what you're going for can make all the difference.
"Work for simplicity more. Keep the lights together, the darks together. Separate lights and shadows enough to make them solid. Don't get too many things in the light --- avoid too many branches, too many windows, too many spots. Only the owner of a house counts the windows."
-- Charles Hawthorne Hawthorne on Painting
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