This new painting started with a basic layin I took to a the Old Bakery & Emporium, a historical non-profit gallery gift shop here in Austin, to work on recently. Here’s my tweet from that day –
I worked in a full basic layover that afternoon that felt pretty darn close to what I wanted – colorful, fun, optimistic 🙂 This is what it looked like end of the afternoon on my mini easel I’d taken to the gallery –
Later at home, a day or two later, I worked in more colors and – esp in the flower – lots more texture! That was fun 🙂
From this point, it was so close to what I wanted I let it hang on my wall near my easel at home where I could see it different ways – in passing, pausing going by, standing in front of it, catching sight of it by surprise – giving me feedback on how it made me feel in moments I wasn’t expecting.
I liked it. A lot!
But I felt it still lacked just a little of something I was looking for, and I wasn’t sure what it was yet.
I liked the way the dark space bottom left between the leaf and the flower matched the upper right corner. The dark contrast worked well, but it also left me feeling isolated somehow. So I worked the flower with tiny gradations of yellows and even pale pinks.
Gradually I began to see I needed to choose. Did I want the flower to be almost as if in space? Bright and shiny against the background with some surrounding foliage and color? Or did I want the flower to be more immersed in its surroundings? Part of the garden?
I decided on the latter and began adding touches into some of the negative spaces.
I remember standing in front of my painting as it rested on the wall about eye level with me, and made the conscious decision to make the upper right darkish area, with its wonderful streaks of thin lines and textures, more aligned with the bottom left, with the lush growth of green leaf – keeping the upper right’s original flow of texture – and added the swatches of green and turquoise!
Prior Version 
Final Version
Now it worked more fully for me!
I liked both versions, but I wanted the feel I got with the finished version – more engaged, more optimistic, more of the sense of the flower as part of a plush garden environment 🙂
I hope you enjoyed the development of my work, and will agree that – sometimes – it really just has to be a choice what we want our art work to become, even if much of the development is intuitive and includes letting portions of the painting just “be”!
Let me know what you think, and thanks so much for stopping by 😊
Adan
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Amazon Author Page – http://author.to/Adans_Amazon_Author_Page
Fine Art America (FAA) – https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/felipeadan-lerma.html
More of my floral work can be seen at – https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/felipeadan-lerma.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=642804 .
* Please note, full res images are available on my FAA site *
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