Flower Study #3 Orchids

Flower Study 3
 Orchids
6 x 8 oil painting by Pat Fiorello

Now that I have wrapped up my color studies from last month, I'm back to painting and posting my floral studies. My intention is to do 50 floral studies over the next couple of months.  I did get a few of them done and now am continuing where I left off..  I last posted study #2, so here is #3. This was one I did a couple of weeks ago from life. It was one I scraped down several times ( this was done before I did the color charts so matching the unusual color of these flowers was a challenge). 

 I must admit this one was frustrating and I gave up at this point. I do see some things I could do to improve next time  especially with the greens. Now that I have done the color charts, I think I could find some better options for the light green that would look less chalky.  Also, because the flowers themselves had light and darks of the same color within each petal it was difficult to see the light and shadow pattern.  After several scrape downs and the real flowers dying, I decided to call it a day on this one and chalk it up to a learning experiment.

Here was the flower that I was  observing. In hindsight, probably putting a light background behind it and  more dramatic lighting would have helped.