Flowers Everywhere!

And here is another flower painting! Well technically not a painting since I didn’t use any paint this time. I chose to take a break from paints and inks and instead went for water-soluble medium. That said of course the colours were spread with wet brushes so could possibly pass as painting. Nonetheless, all I wanted was to try something different. And what more perfect subject to do this than flowers! With them, you can experiment with all the pretty colours in various shapes and forms to create a stunning piece.

Water-soluble Mediums

On a large 40×50 cm paper (360 gsm), I used three different mediums in the following sequence:

• Neocolor II water-soluble oil pastels by Caran d’Ache
• Faber Castell’s Gelatos wax sticks
• Prismalo Aquarelle coloured pencils by Caran d’Ache

So first came the Neocolor II oil pastels with which I firstly drew then coloured in before spreading the colours with a wet brush. Then I added the Gelatos in the same method. Both spread quite easily and you can’t really see the difference in the results, although the Gelatos come with a wider variety of vivid shades. Finally, I incorporated some smaller flower designs using aquarelle Prismalo pencils. I tried not to overlap the different colours and mediums like I would do with acrylic inks because, being water soluble, they may dissolve with each other. Below is a gallery of the sequence from which you can scroll through!

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Embellished with Bling

Although the colours alone were already beautiful as they were, I felt like adding more to it. In came the sequins, glitter glue, Nuvo drops and some doodles with a white gel pen, as seen closely below:

And here is the whole picture:

I found this quite a pleasant and relaxing session, being able to try out different mediums with the same properties. Experimenting with colours and planning beforehand how well they work together was a challenge but fun. It’s also good to switch to large-scale drawings like this from time to time. With larger paper, one obviously has more flexibility in experimenting with different possibilities, shapes and sizes but still maintain a sense of space. Despite the chaotic mix of colourful flowers, just looking at this artwork gives some peace and calm. I’ll definitely be working on a large scale again soon!