Painting Process: Wildflowers of West Virginia
The idea for this painting came about on a hike with my family earlier this spring. My son Kieran, age 2, is a little sponge—it’s wonderful to watch him contemplate the little things in front of him. He likes field guides and books that show different types of things—leaves, birds, rocks, dinosaurs, and so on. I wanted to create a piece that catalogued something, and I felt pulled to get back into a more consistent painting habit.
I have always loved antique botanical posters and wanted to create something in that style. This concept would allow me to practice in small chunks, which is actually the same tactic I used when I got started with watercolors as a medium seven years ago. I started painting flowers because they were small, easy to complete quickly, and there is an endless variety of subject matter.
Getting Started
I decided to create one large 16” x 20” painting with all of the flowers, with a hand painted title and hand lettered common names and Latin names for the flowers. This meant if I didn’t like how one of the flowers ended up that I was stuck with it, but it also meant that I couldn’t hyper-fixate and redo things over and over again.
Research
I began researching common West Virginia wildflowers and referenced the West Virginia Department of Agriculture website as my main source. I then chose to include flowers that we see frequently and had photographed myself throughout the years. I tried to pick a variety of shapes and colors—I wanted my flower selections to complement each other to create a cohesive overall design.
Sketching
The sketching process for this piece is unique—I started digitally in Procreate. With some loose gestural shapes as placeholders, I added loose sketches that included stems and petals. This involved several rounds of reorganizing, shrinking and enlarging different flowers, and again considering color placement, contrast, etc. I then brought my Procreate sketch into Photoshop and added my text. I printed this illustration out a few times for spell-checking, both at small size and at actual size of 16”x20”. There were a few more rounds of nudging, resizing, and proofreading. Once I settled on the final digital sketch, I did a graphite transfer onto my watercolor paper.
My main focus with the graphite transfer was the text placement. I actually ended up redrawing most of the flowers one more time directly on the watercolor paper. I felt anxious that I had spent too much time working digitally and was glad to be working with a real pencil to hone in on the small details.
Painting
After the sketch felt solid, we were ready for paint! I started in the lower left hand corner and laid protective paper on top of the rest of the piece. Working bottom to top felt like less pressure and physically was easier to reach at the beginning. I was trying to lessen all hurdles at the starting point.
I haven’t painted in such a focused way since I had my son nearly 3 years ago and needed to re-learn my palette and revisit a bit of color theory. When you’re painting flowers, it can help to use pure pigments rather than mixing colors to achieve the most vibrant shades for petals and greenery. I actually ended up creating a specific flower/botanical focused palette of colors with my existing paints.
I plotted out each individual flower’s palette of about 8 colors before starting to actually paint it. I created swatches for each, partially for my own fun, and because I was curious what colors I would end up using the most overall. This would help create some overall color harmony by using the same techniques and colors for shadow (Cobalt Blue or Dioxazine Purple) and warm light (Cadmium Yellow Light or Quinacridone Gold).
I think I also figured out how to paint my white flowers realistically. The most natural looking combination for me was a mix of washes in Quinacridone Gold with Cobalt Green and Dioxazine Purple for shadows. I'm eager to try this in a different application with a different tri-color blend to compare and contrast results. It’s interesting that this mix of three generally vibrant hues can make your eyes and brain say, “that’s a white flower.” I had a similar thought process about the Daylily. When I first look at it, my brain says, “orange,” but when I painted it I only used reds, pinks, and peaches on the petals.
I found a rhythm in painting a wash, stepping away and letting it dry, then coming back in for another wash, which allowed the paint layers to bleed naturally. I’m specifically interested to take what I’ve learned here and apply it to future landscape paintings. I have a habit of focusing so much on accuracy for a whole piece and controlling every stroke and I'd like to try to let some areas of a larger landscape be looser and more organic.
Lettering
After finishing up the flowers, I decided to paint the title for some added visual interest and then inked each flower's Latin name with Sakura Micron pens (after yet another spell-check). I took lots of breaks to avoid my hand cramping up and slipping.
Overview - and thank you for reading!
This painting took me about five months to complete in-between work, parenting, and life. I’m so excited to share the completed original and prints and appreciate anyone who has read this far about my artistic process for my first blog entry.
I’m looking forward to hanging one of the prints on my own wall so that we can identify flowers we find on hikes in the future and have it be part of our family memories.
Interested in the Original Painting or Prints?
The original painting and prints in both 16" x 20" and 11" x 14" sizes will be available Friday, November 22nd. If you’re interested in getting notified when that happens, subscribe to my Studio Newsletter.