It’s a process!

This piece is one that has been brewing in my mind now for quite some time. One of my favorite wild flowers is chicory! In Western New York they are referred to as “corn flowers” because they grow in ditches and fields, especially corn fields ! They are most beautiful and are perennial. They like to spread so in lawns they mayappearwhere you forgot to weed wack…they are prolific and do take over…but they are so lovely! I have often picked long stalks of these flowers and brought them inside with orange day lillies which also grow in ditches and are free for the taking! My Mother and I would go round in the spring looking for large patches of day lilliesto transplant to our property. You can never have too many day lillies as they are a good ” naturalization ” plant. My Dear Friend Pejj Nunes from Annisette Studios had done a Shibui Painting of these Chicory flowers and it inspired me! I always havea few Shibui Foundations around that I’ve previously done. I look at each from time to time and see weather I am reminded of certain shapes within this action art. I had just finished a peice I am entering in an art contest and thought to myself ” let’s see what’s in these foundations I have tucked away”. Now Pejj had just posted a blog about her Chicory Shibui and it was fresh on my mind. I studied a few of thesefoundation pieces and picked one I thought had stems and flowers suggested in it and chose that one as my next project.

I wasn’t quite sure if these colors would be right but I did see blank white spaces where color enhancement could be done. I started finding the flower shapes and the main stem shapes and looked at reference photos on pinterest to familiarize myself with the specific petal / flowers hopes of Chicory that I found pleasing. I then encororated these shapes along the main stems carefully drawing them in pencil. Then it wartime to add color! I used prismacolor pencils to start defining the flowers that would appear closest to the viewer. These were my “event” field. Then I used gouche to lightly paint in the main stems and lighter faded stems and smaller flowers that would give it a sense of depth. Next I continued to rework the flowers adding more colors and deepening their centers and underneath each to also add depth and have the larger, more detailed flowers appear to come forward within the painting. I wanted to add other colors in the back ground to fill out the painting in a pleasing way. I used simple watercolors for this part. I then let the peice completely dry over night. The next morning I worked on it again, adding a few leaf shapes, tiny contrasting colored flowers here and there, and a bright crimson orb to the sky in the background. I enhanced the colors by layering colored pencil on top of the layers already there behind the main event flowers. Once dried thoroughly I used black India ink to outline my flowers and stems. And viola! I was satisfied.