Name of Piece: Bouquet of Flowers
Title: Bouquet of Lily Sunflowers and Marigolds
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Title: Bouquet of Lily Sunflowers and Marigolds
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This entire project was inspired by his still life of Sunflowers. When I saw this painting I was inspired mostly by his choice of colors and the way he unified them. Specifically, the background is composed of both blue and pink along with some very subtle red and dark blue in some areas. Despite both colors being almost on opposite sides of the color wheel Monet managed to create a unified background that does not detract from the focal point of the painting the sunflower. This is mostly due to the way the background swirls around the flowers leaving the views back to the flower. There is also the fact that the between areas with a lot of pink and light blue the colors are muddled leaving almost gray color. Then the is the use of texture and colors on thought out the entire painting more specifically on the flowers that give them dimension.
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As stated before the painting Sunflower was from a series of still life made by Monet and exhibited at the seventh Impressionist exhibition. These Sunflowers were from his garden in Vetheuil. This painting was revered by critics and was also compared to Vincent Van Gogh's painting of sunflower which while has some similarities they are different in style and composition. Van Gogh did admire Monet work specifically his still lifies.
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During this process debating I was debating if I should only choose one flower to paint. If I had chosen to only paint one, I would have chosen to do marigolds. Though I would have probably changed the suture of the painting since Marigolds are really chosen compared to sunflowers so having the same composition would not have made sense. These are some of the pictures of the reference pictures I took for the marigolds since they're the only flowers that grown nearby.
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To start the project I made a canvas using the material in the studio at school. Making the frame then cutting out canvas sheets and wrapping them around the frame tightly and stapling them. I used a 12 by 24-inch canvas mostly because I have too many and I need to get rid of some but also long vertically which allowed enough space to include all the different flowers I wanted. Starting with a sketch I started with making a grid but I ended up not using the grid so it was entirely pointless. Instead, I decided to sketch the flowers by hand onto the canvas mostly because it did good practice but it also focused me to study the plants and figure out how to place them in a way that made sense. For this step, I mostly used references found online since I don’t have sunflowers or lilies in my house. I have marigolds in my backyard that I took pictures of for reference. I did end up using the grid to place the two vases and the small pot on the canvas. Looking back the flowers are probably not proportioned right compared to each other. For example, the lily and sunflower are the same sizes, and even though the sunflowers are farther back in the composition they should be a bit bigger. Same with the marigolds I have no idea how big they are about sunflowers and marigolds but they're a believable size.
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Continuing on, I started painting the background colors first because from past experiences I have learned that the background colors affect the color of other objects in the painting. I started with layering a few darker tones of blue and reddish gray in larger bush tires and slower added smaller brush strokes of colors. I did go on to paint some initial color on the sunflower since I needed to build up layers. I also added some color to the pot and vases. Adding light brown to the pot as well as light blue and light pink for the vases. While planning I did have the idea to put the lilies in a clear vase to make the vases contrast each other more but decided against it because of my lack of experience in painting glass. |
I continued by layering smaller brushstrokes to the background of the painting. Trying to follow closely to how Monet did his own painting I went in with many small brushstrokes. I also started layering more colors onto the different vases. I decided to do horizontal strokes on one of the vases since it contrasted the vertical lines in the background. Also finished the bottom half of the background adding many horizontal lines of red paint in various shapes. I have no idea what the actual carpet or drape used looked like or if what's covering part of the table is a drape but I tried to do something similar adding larger red marks and thinner dark blue marks giving the table what looks like a carpet.
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The last step I needed to complete this project was painting the flowers and the stems which I vaguely started adding yellow and continued to build alternating between red and yellow for the sunflower. For the lilies I was planning for them to be white but that alone would look odd against all the colors, so I added streaks of blue and purple to add more color and movement to the flower. For the last flowers the marigolds had to layer the paint thick in order to get the paint to stick. The only leaves I was debating on how to make were the marigolds because they were small and not very structured and for that reason, I implied the leaves adding quick lighter shades of green on top to suggest branches of leaves which I think was effective.
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Part of my experimentation was with the method in which I made the marigolds. I started off trying to paint each of the petals a different color but it did not really work since the yellow paint was really thin leaving the under sketch and the flowers were not resembling flower. In order to fix this I decided to layer the yellow paint thick while adding red on the inside of the petals while still wet.
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