Peonies are a most beautiful flower, don't you think? They are gone from my garden now, so I painted one of them to save its memory. I'll show you how I did this painting below, but first, look what showed up in my yard the other day:
Wild turkeys. Do you have them where you are? There were two families of babies taking a dust bath in the vacant areas of my herb garden. When they saw me, of course they headed for the woods.
I have seen turkey families before in my yard, but had not seen the babies quite so close up. One set of babies was larger than the other, so I knew it was two different sets and there were two moms watching over the bunch. Cute!
OK, now let's see how I did the oil painting. A rough sketch on the panel comes first so I'll know what I'm doing here. Then I start with the flower petals doing one at a time adding light areas and dark areas as I go.
It's important with realism to establish where the light source is coming from so the shadows will be consistent. In this case, the light is coming from the upper left.
Here is the peony and one of the buds:
Below I'm adding more darks and defining the shadow side a bit more to give the flower depth:
Once I'm happy with the flowers, I add the leaves. What a difference it makes to get those green colors in there:
Last I add a sky blue background, keeping it simple to allow a restful area for the eye. This makes a triangular composition that I think is nice. Here it is all finished!
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