Do you like to see how things are made, even if you never plan to make it? There are endless options on the Food Network, HGTV, or a good percentage of the shows on Netflix…I’m guessing I’m alone wanting to know all the details.
When I see the final result of what someone made, I always wonder what happened before they reach that point. How did they start? What was challenging? How did they overcome?
My paintings are equal (or more) part research as actual painting time, so in case you’re curious about what goes on behind the scenes before I pick up a paintbrush, I thought I’d share the process here.
There’s always a connection between paintings that leads to the next project.
I recently painted three colorful paintings where I explored the balance of opacity and transparency, detailed lines and washes. This time, I continued that balance in this new painting but with a limited color palette.
The final painting took about 2.5 hours, but the planning stage took another 2.5 hours too! Getting a stretch that long has to be early morning or late night. In this case, it was a 4:50am start to finish before my daughter woke up. (I felt pretty tired later that day and the next since I’m long past those days when amount of sleep had little effect on me.)
Here’s what the planning looked like:
Choose the subject: camellias
Choose the overall feel: calm and bright
Browse a book that relates: Japanese flower book (see below)
Find a starting place and sketch: sketch options
Browse color palettes for ideas: Japanese color palette book (see below)
Add color swatches into sketchbook: mix colors and write down names
I was looking at this book, an exhibition catalog called Flowers from the Tokyo National Museum - a gift from a professor friend.
In the book, this Imari ware plate from the Tokyo National Museum captured by eyes and heart:
That was the beginning, then I moved into how to arrange floral patterns and browsed Japanese kimono patterns.
4 is an unlucky number (because “shi” can mean “four” or “death”) so it’s more common to see 5 of something.
I included the five camellias and added one bud because I like that as a reminder of potential.
One of my favorite books, another gift from a dear friend in Japan, is Traditional Japanese Color Palette (available on Amazon).
It’s a rich reference for unique color palettes that I browse often.
I’ve had bookmarks in for years of my favorites, and this time I kept going back to page 92-93.
The blue camellias were my focus, but this armor and color palette solidified how to do it. The yellow needed to be lighter, more muted so it wouldn’t compete with the blue.
Blue would be the star of the show.
Red would be an important but small accent.
Yellow would be faint and warm.
Then I’d figure out what to do from there.
It helps to sketch it out and see the colors. Because I have 5 shades of different dark blues, I had to write down which I was using. You can see two other dark blue shades in the top right that were too dark.
Holbein watercolors have been my go-to since my grandmother gave me hers which I still use, decades after she first bought them. This Cobalt Blue was an addition I purchased last year, still from Holbein. The vibrant colors keep their color even after drying!
After deciding colors, I looked up “kimono patterns” “flower patterns” “camellia patterns” on Google and Pinterest to get an idea of how to simplify the flower form. I based my shape off of a few that I found and repeated it with slight variations in a circular shape.
I painted each petal and left space between so the white between is just the paper.
Then I added the little red marks in the center of each flower.
Next came the yellow camellia leaves. While the yellow was wet on the paper, I added a dot of rusty red/orange to bleed into the yellow. That orange is a transition between the yellow leaf and red center of the flowers.
It still felt incomplete, so after staring blankly a while, I referred back to my sketchbook where I drew a leaf shape that caught my eye from the Tokyo National Museum book.
I added it in a light aqua green based on the original ceramic plate palette, and some detail based on my recent 3 colorful paintings.
The final result looks like this:
I’d like to continue this circular composition with flowers and more subjects. There’s more to come! Let me know if you’d like to know more detailed background like this.