Flower paintings and cards

Over the years I have painted numerous still lifes of flowers. I try to capture the feel and character of the flower. I like to buy flowers for the table if I don't have any in the garden to pick. At this time of the year I mainly buy tulips and roses.

I love it when the light hits the flowers and makes the petals and leaves really shine. I try to capture this in my paintings. I usually start by making sketches of the flowers in pencil, charcoal or pastel. I really look and try to capture what I see and the character of each flower. For instance if the flower is standing up or bowed down. I look at the length and position of the petals. I treat them rather as I would people by looking at their proportions.

Below is a sketch I have done in charocoal

Flowers in a vase, sketch

It is useful to have the sketch as a reminder when panting the flowers. Here is the final painting.

I often do little sketch paintings of my flowers to make personal cards. The following sketches were made of the spring helebores in my garden. I use cards which have a rectangular aperture which allows me to stick these original sketchs in. For these sketches I used paper I had prepared for the first two and brown paper on the last one.