Sunflowers- experimenting with the palette knife

Sunburst- Revisited
6 x 12 oil painting
by Pat Fiorello
$200

Doing some more experimentation with the palette knife. Took a painting I'd completed a couple of years back and sanded it down and decided to rebuild it using the palette knife mostly and a little bit of brushwork at the end.

Dreamy -White Roses- experimenting with the palette knife

Dreamy
 8x8 oil painting
by Pat Fiorello
$200

Was doing a little study of 3 roses from a photo. Did a little experimentation with a palette knife at the end to destroy some of what had been created.  Adds a little mystery, texture, edge variation.  Think I will continue to experiment with this. What do you think?

Cosmos

Cosmos
9 x 12 Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello
$425

Recently visited a lavender farm in North GA. They also had a lovely colorful field of cosmos.

I decided to give it a try in a painting. It was a very complex field so there was a challenge to simplify, yet not lose part of the essence of this type of field that is inherently busy.

I started laying in the dark background and different greens of a lighter value that other foliage would be laid on top of at later stages.  I had toned the canvas with a light application of thinned transparent oxide red and viridian. I then took a paper towel and q tips soaked in gamsol (solvent) and lifted out where the flowers of pure color would go. So below is where I started to work on the flowers. Then it was a process of putting down shapes of color (that's what painting is) and refining and then coming on top of paint with lines, dots and dashes to suggest the busy-ness of the field.

Spray Roses

Spray Roses
12 x 16 oil painting
by Pat Fiorello

I have 3 general approaches for starting a painting and vary them based on my intention for the painting, the needs of the subject matter, or sometimes just the mood I'm in.    Sometimes I do a hybrid approach to combine the best of the methods. So there is no particular formula that is right. There are countless ways to create a painting.

For this one I decided to try an approach that I use least- that is to paint in  midtones and dark all over the canvas and then wipe out where my lighter flower shapes will be.  

I had these spray roses as subject. Didn't want to have them in the vase, but wanted to give more of a "gardeny" feel.

Here's the painting blocked in and then with the light shapes wiped out.

  

Then started to tone the shadow areas of the light flowers, add lights and further refine shapes.

I purposely did not want to spell out an exact rendering of each flower, but developed what I wanted as the center of interest further and left other areas just suggested.

Garden Spot

Garden Spot
6 x 8 Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello
$100

Took an old painting, sanded it down, oiled it out and then rebuilt the paint strokes with thicker paint. Kind of fun to do or a change. There's already a design and basic values blocked in so you get to play with color, brushstrokes and thicker paint.

Flowing

Flowing
 12 x 16 Oil Painting

 Continuing with my "Garden Fresh" series of flowers on plants in the garden, as opposed to arranged in a still life,  is my newest painting, "Flowing".

Of course I loved the abundant cluster of these beautiful garden roses, but also liked the idea of them flowing down, like a waterfall.

Here's a photo of what I originally saw ( If I recall correctly,  this was from a trip to Tuscany where flowers were growing against a stone wall).

I took a black and white version of the photo and added my own white and light grey magic marker on top of it for light shapes I wanted to add to improve the composition, especially in the top area which is kind of empty in the original photo. Then eliminated some shapes that were unnecessary or distracting ( e.g. in the lower right corner). From there, proceeded with painting "Flowing" (pictured above).