I want to paint loosely; I don't want to paint details. But when it comes to flowers, I feel like I need to paint some level of detail—more than I want—because I haven't painted enough of them to know how to capture their form in a loose fashion. The last thing I wanted to do was try to make this look photographic, and I'm happy it doesn't, but I am trying to paint flowers that are detailed enough to be recognizable, because I'm a gardener and a plant lover. (For you other gardeners, there are alstromerias, astrantias, barberry, corydalis, and one allium.)
What I did here was put in the background foliage first, getting both the shape and the overall dark-light and color pattern of the gentle curves down before I even thought about where the flowers would go. I felt like the background established the structure, and that structure was really the most important element of the painting. I still remember this planting as incredibly dense, dozens of different plants crammed together and foliage so thick you couldn't poke a stick through it, and I wanted to get that overabundance in the painting.
When it came to painting the flowers, I quickly discovered that my reference photo wasn't sharp enough to be able to make out the separate flowers in the big clumps of alstromerias, and in the end I didn't even try. I settled for working up only the bottom two clumps as realistically as I could, and capturing just a rough color pattern of the rest of the alstromerias.
The purple astrantias were just as difficult because they're so textured, such fuzzy little puffballs, in all shades of dark red violet to near-white. Again, if I wanted them to be identifiable, I had to make them somewhat detailed.
The lesson for me was, the first time you paint something, it's very much a learning process. I wasn't painting the flowers so much as trying to figure out how to paint the flowers, and this painting is the result.
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