White-Out Florals
I've been experimenting a lot in the studio lately. I've felt a bit disconnected from my Vibrant Whimsy series, so it felt like the right moment to step back and explore something new. This time, I've been working with circles instead of squares. The way the colors blend at the edges is beautiful, and keeping the center untouched reveals the first layer of color in a way I really love.
I finished a 30x20 piece in this new style, and yesterday I started an 18x18 test piece to see how my floral motif might interact with the surface. My studio friends responded really well to the 30x20, but I still felt like something was missing. Hence the 18x18. But when it came time to place the flowers, I froze. I couldn't settle on the composition.
That's when I decided to manipulate the painting digitally; a safe way to explore ideas without the fear of ruining a piece I already liked with a poorly thought-out composition. I've been wanting to return to florals for a while, but the last few attempts left me disappointed. Working digitally gives me a little confidence back. Even a quick markup sketch on my phone helps me visualize where the paint should go before committing to anything irreversible.
The real question became: do I paint the flowers while the surface is still wet with white, or wait to avoid overmixing the colors? My answer ended up being...both. It took stepping away and playing with oil pastels to gather the courage to revisit this painting. Once I mixed my colors and brought the canvas out of storage, I finally felt ready again. And honestly, I had a blast. It was scary at first; there's always that fear of ruining a painting that already feels fragile, but the rich creamy texture of the oil paint pulled me through.
What the photos don't show is how much I disliked the earlier stages of this piece. My first attempt at the flowers had to be scraped away; the thick underlayer made it impossible to get the smoothness I needed. When I try to add my traditional floral designs to wet, heavily textured paint, it turns into a sloppy, tangled mess. For about a week, I avoided the piece entirely. I moved on to other paintings and tried to pretend this one didn't exist. At one point, I even tucked it into the storage closet out of frustration; it felt like my first real failure in a long time. So I returned to the comfort of my Vibrant Whimsy series.
Lately, the studio ventilation issues have kept me from painting as consistently as I'd like. To satisfy the craving to create, I started leaning into oil pastels. One painting in particular had been "finished" for a while, even though I never felt complete with it. On whim, I added oil pastel to the surface, and it completely changed my relationship with the piece. Oil pastel are just as creamy and expressive as oil paint, but in a wonderfully different way.
