Perhaps I Owe Having Become a Painter to Flowers....

This past spring I spotted trays of beautiful annuals outside a local grocery store and couldn't resist snapping a few photos to paint.  

Once I got out the photos and tried to think thru my painting, here we go with that hard composition lesson that I so need to work on.  How do you know when to edit?  We all love flowers and they smell really beautiful, but they can be so messed up in a painting.  Believe me I have samples where it looks as if I tried to cram every flower known to man into the painting.  

Okay, here 'my children of the paintings,' I have a HUGE tip for you that worked for me.  You know how you can take your fingers and zoom in on a photo on your Ipod or iPad?  Well, I guess you don't know that if you don't have one.  It is the same as laying paper over a section of a photo and cutting it down to a reasonable interesting view.  My IPad just made it easier for me to do it and somehow this summer, it all clicked in my head when I did it!  Eureka!  Or maybe I should shout out...Petunia!!

I took the above photo and scaled it down to a more interesting crop below.  It was admittedly a kind of mistake, but it finally broke thru this old girl's head.

 Here are the results of the first day or two of blocking in....
                                                                                                                                                                                       
   

And here is the final painting.  Amazing how much better it looks with an edited version of the photo!  Flowers can say all kinds of things...I'm sorry, I love you, Feel better...But for me, they say LESSON LEARNED!

Can we conceive what humanity would be it it did not know the flowers of paintings?

Buying someone flowers is kind of a weird idea. Like: Hey, these are for you, now watch them slowly die, because I love you.