Mother’s Day 2020 painting
The beginning of this year I started to get back into painting after a hiatus of few of years. I’ll get into why I stepped away from painting, and why I returned, in a future blog post. The focus of this post isn’t on that part of the journey. Instead it is on acting on inspiration from this past week.
Taking a step back, one of the things my mom asked me for a couple of years ago was a painting. She really likes hummingbirds, and wanted a simple watercolor. When she first asked for this painting, she implied in that way only mothers can do that it would be a good Mother’s Day gift.
Of course if you’ve looked at the thumbnail for this post or have scrolled down the page, you’ve already realized (1) this isn’t a painting of a hummingbird (2) this isn’t a watercolor.
So what’s the deal?
First things first…
(Mom, if you are reading this) Don’t worry, I’m still working on the hummingbird painting. I’ve actually spent the last year working on sketches, color palette decompositions and different media formats for the painting. I haven’t forgotten, and hopefully when it is done you’ll love it.
With that disclaimer out of the way, let me quickly step you through what happened here. Beyond hummingbirds, my mom likes frogs and dragonflies. When I picked up her Mother’s Day card, I (unsurprisingly) didn’t come across any frog cards. I did find a really nice dragonfly card from Papyrus Greeting Cards, promptly buying it.
Remember the part about the painting not being a watercolor? Well I’ve been doing a lot of abstract acrylic painting this year as I’ve gotten back into painting. Acrylics are a medium I’ve historically shied away from. But a funny thing happened at the end of last year. Acrylic pouring videos started mysteriously showing up in my Youtube feed. I thought, “that looks interesting”. So I started doing some acrylic pours. Then I started to branch out into other abstract techniques using acrylics, and I’m loving it.
So I was putting my mom’s signed Mother’s Day card into the envelope, when I was struck with the idea to paint her a small painting based on the card as a Mother’s Day gift…
…which brings us to this post. I’ve broken down the steps in the painting.
This is the card that started it all. I thought it was a really interesting mixed-media piece with the jeweled dragonflies. Interestingly, the colors looked different in the photo than they did to my eyes. The magenta on the wings were more and the veins running through them looked more silver. I chose my color palette based on what my eyes saw, and didn’t look at the photo until I pulled it into Lightroom.
First I grabbed a 5x7 from the stack of practice canvases I have in my workbench. I don’t normally use these canvases for anything beyond testing colors, brushes, new tools, strokes or techniques on a very limited scale. For this painting, however, I chose one of these canvases specifically because they were about the same size as the card.
For the background color, I decided to go with Ocean Green in the Master’s Touch acrylics. I used a 1” flat brush to cover the canvas. After the coat was put on the canvas, I sprayed it with a light coat of water and patted it down with a paper towel to thin paint and add a little texture.
With the background dry, it was time to draw in the plants.
For the stalks, I used a 1/4” flat brush with Light Green paint from Artist’s Loft. Looking back on it, I probably should have used one of the Princeton Catalyst Contour tools to get sharper stalks.
Using a wooden chicken skewer, I added in the the stalk highlights using Parchment from Artist’s Loft.
Finally, I added in the flowers with a rigger brush in Titanium White and Raw Umber from Artist’s Loft.
Now it was time to add in the dragonflies. I decided to go with three instead of two because the upper right right of the canvas felt very empty.
The bodies were done in three passes with a palette knife (1) primary color (2) secondary color (3) accent with primary color. Of the three, my favorite is the magenta and violet dragonfly. The swirls in the body are more visually interesting than the color patterns in the other two.
For these dragonflies, I use Artist’s Loft paints again. The color breakdowns are:
Dragonfly 1
Cerulean Blue
Aqua Green
Silver
Dragonfly 2
Vermillion
Yellow
Silver
Dragonfly 3
Violet
Light Magenta
Silver
As a finishing touch, the painting is bordered in a light violet to mirror the color of the envelope I used to send the Mother’s Day card.
Overall, I was pleased the final result, given that I’m more used to doing abstracts in acrylic. Once the varnish dries, I’ll get this shipped off. Hopefully it is a good stand-in until I can get the hummingbirds done.