Orange Flower Painting

Bit of a catch up.

My last post had a picture at the end of it of an orange flower against an out-of-focus background:



I started the painting about a week after finishing the white star flower one.  And I'm not sure that I like the finished result all that much.  But, hey, I'm getting ahead of myself a bit - I've a series of photos to show you how the picture progressed.  As I've said before, in these paintings that I'm currently doing, the background takes far longer to do than the focal point, the flower.  There are many, many different colours layered over each other, often physically ground into the acrylic paper in order to give an airbrushed effect.  I chose this particular photograph as I thought the colours were bright and the background kind of interesting.

Anyway, here's the progress:











And finally, with the masking tape removed and edges touched up:



I can't quite put my finger on what's not quite right with this painting.  It's the colours, I think.  The background colours are too bright and the orange flower doesn't 'pop' enough.  Also, in the photo, the flower is practically neon orange and I just couldn't quite bring myself to paint it as bright as, I think now, it should have been.

I tried photographing it against a different background but it just seems a bit 'flat' to me -



Never mind - it's all good practice.  It just means this is definitely one I'll be putting in the Cranleigh Art and Crafts Society's October exhibition in the hope that someone loves it more than I do!