Still Life Painting : Oriental Vase and Oranges

Oriental Vase & Oranges
9 x 12
Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello

Decided to take a break from the flower studies for a day and did one of the still life lessons from an on line study program I have been doing this year with Dan Edmonson.

 In his program, Dan supplies the photo's of some great still life set ups along with an on line video( and  permanent copy on CD) . There are 10 lessons in his still life series and he also has a similar landscape series available. The lessons build on each other and get progressively more challenging.

This was number 8 of the series of 10 and it was definitely challenging. In hindsight, I wished I had done it on a bigger canvas.  I could have used larger brushstrokes in describing each of the elements since there is a lot going on on this small canvas.

These classical dark style still lives are probably not my personal style, but they have been great training.  Dan is an excellent and generous instructor who consistently provides spot on feedback. I have really enjoyed and learned a lot from his instruction and would highly recommend you check his programs out.

Flower Study #43 Loosening up

                                                                         Flower Study #43
                                                                                   9 x 12
                                                                     Oil Painting on Panel
                                                                           by Pat Fiorello


For this painting, I focused on trying to get a looser feel, with a bit more movement. I did more of a close up vignette rather than a full still life or painting including a vase. Kept the background simple, with some of the toned canvas visible. Plan to do more in this direction, continuing to contrast hard vs soft edges.

Flower Study 42- Grand Bouquet

Flower Study # 42
Grand Bouquet
16 x 20
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello

If you read my last blog, you saw the flowers we put together the last day of  flower design class to simulate what might be needed for a wedding. This was one of the large altar pieces that I arranged. It was very large, so when I brought it home, I tried it out on a larger canvas than most of my other studies.


Here's the original inspiration.

Here's the initial block in to establish general placement

This is the next phase putting in an underpainting for the background. After this stage , I started building the forms of the flowers and added more opaques to the background to suggest a neutral lighter backdrop

Flower Study 41- Flowing Roses, Wedding Flowers

Flower Study #41
Flowing Roses
9 x 12
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello



I had an arrangement of flowers that  was an unusual project in my flower design class. The last day of class we did flowers for a wedding. The full deal- bouquets, altar flowers, even flowers to decorate a gazebo which we had set up in the classroom. We also made" pew markers" -flowers that go on the aisle in a church for a wedding. The arrangement was one sided so that it could flatly rest against the side of a pew. I liked the color harmonies of subtle pinks and off whites, so I decided to do a study of this flower grouping.
 Th nature of it was flowing, so I decided to use this as an opportunity to try to keep it really loose and capture a feeling of energy and movement.

Here is the photo of the inspiration, as well as some other fun photo's from our last day of class creating the wedding flower arrangements.

A large arrangement suitable for the altar at a wedding

Here I am in the gazebo we decorated

The final day of flower design class, my 5 classmates, and I staged flowers for an entire wedding

I'm working on a larger painting of the larger altar piece in the urn and will post that later this week.

Flower Study #40

Floral Study #40
Lilies in Classic Urn
6x6
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello


This is another in the series based on floral arrangements I did in floral design school.

                                                                 Here's the original inspiration:

I'm not too wild about lilies ( compared to some of my other favorite flowers like roses, hydrangeas, delphinium etc..) and the lilies seemed pretty big in the real arrangement, so I made them smaller in the painted version.  I do think it lost something in translation so this may be one to try over. I just happened to watch the Daniel Keys video on painting lilies yesterday and after seeing that may have some new approaches on handling the big lily.

This was the symmetrical version of this arrangement, but there is also an asymmetrical oen that might be a bit more dynamic composition for painting.

Painting in Italy

I just returned home from teaching a workshop in Northern italy. I had a group of 12 students from various places in the US with me. We met in Milan and spent a couple of days there, then spent the rest of the week in a small town on Lake Garda.
Below is a demonstration painting I did the first day of the cloistered monastery where we stayed.

San Tomasso
Gargnano Italy
12 x 16 Watercolor
by Pat Fiorello
SOLD

Here are some other photo's from the workshop.

Flower Study #38

Flower Study # 38

Fruit & Flowers Della Robbia

12 x 12

Oil Painting on Panel

By Pat Fiorello 

I just got back from teaching a painting workshop in beautiful Lake Garda, Italy. Will share more about that later this week, but still have a few flower studies from my flower design program that I wanted to share. This one is from a design we did which is called a Della Robbia- an arrangement that includes fruit and flowers. Here we included apples, limes and kiwi in the arrangement in addition to the orchids and roses. The colors in the painting were a little hard to photograph and adjust quite right, but it has a more subtle neutral cool grey background than is probably showing up on the computer monitor.

The actual arrangement is pictured below at my work station in the floral design studio.

Flower Study #36 Roses & Spider Mum

Flower Study  36

6 x 8

Oil Painting on Panel

by Pat Fiorello

This is a tiny still life, just trying to capture the essence of a vase of loosely arranged flowers featuring roses and a large spider mum. The mums can be a challenge since they have so many petals, so I tried to simplify that without losing the characteristic feeling of the flower.

Flower Study #35- Roses, Hydrangeas & Larkspur- 3 arrangements

Flower Study #35
Roses, Hydrangea, Larkspur
12 x 12



This paintings was inspired by one of my arrangements from my flower design class . Last week we took a selections of the same flowers- roses, lilies, larkspur, hydrangeas and some various foliage and 2 made 3 different arrangements. One was in a tall vase, one in a short vase and one in a basket. The photo's of the arrangements are below. One point of the exercise was to show how with the same flower materials we could make different arrangmetns that all had a different feel. The small one was my favorite so I started with that one as a painting subject.

Watercolor demonstration- Smith Gilbert Gardens plein air workshop

Smith Gilbert Perennial Gardens
12 x 16
  Watercolor
by Pat Fiorello



We had another plein air workshop at the beautiful Smith Gilbert Gardens in Kennesaw, GA.
In this demo, I tried to capture the feeling of abundance of plants in a small section of their perennial gardens.

Here are some of my students having fun in the garden painting. It turned out to be a nice day- cooler than our last trip there in June

Flower Study #34 Roses & Hydrangeas

Flower Study #34
Roses & Hydrangeas
6 x 6 Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello

$100

Tried a little more contemporary asymmetrical design today. Good opportunity to work on suggesting a grouping of roses.

Flower Study #33-Roses, limited palette

Flower Study #33
6 x 6 Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello

This is a little study of a rose arrangement. Wanted to keep the color palette pretty limited- orange, violet & green and keep the suggestion of the roses loose. Used both brushes and palette knife.






If you are in Atlanta, tonight I'll be doing a painting demonstration at 
The Art House Gallery in Buckhead at 3193 Paces Ferry Place. It starts at 6pm. I'll be doing a watercolor of this arrangement of hydrangeas I pulled together yesterday. The event is free and open to the public so everyone is invited to attend. Gallery sales support the Fragile Kids Foundation.

Flower Study #32 Stargazer Lily

Flower Study #32
Stargazer Lily
6 x 6 Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello

I thought this flower would be easy since it's just a few large petals- but if fooled me. I've done many of these lilies in watercolor and know how to make the transition between the red petals and the white edges smoothly, but this was a lot trickier. Will have to try a few more to get the hang of it.

Flower Study # 31 Yellow Roses

Flower Study #31
Yellow Roses
6 x 6
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello




Had a few yellow roses left over from last weeks flower arranging class, so chose those for today's study.

Flower Study #30- Roses & Friends

Here's a small study I started a couple of weeks ago. Was having a hard time with it that day and scraped it down several times, but decided to give it another try this week. Did most of it with a palette knife to try out a different texture and look.

Flower Study #30
Roses & Friends
6 x 8
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello

Flower Study #29-Highlands Sunflowers

I did this painting from a photo- but it was of an actual arrangement I made for my demonstration in the painting workshop I led in Highlands NC last week.

Flower Study #29
Highlands Sunflowers
8 x 10
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello


Below is a photo of the arrangement as well as a couple of earlier stages in the process.which led to the finished painting above.

Here was the initial block in:

Then added in a background base before  the next stage of adding form to the flowers. I eventually went lighter and more neutral with the background, but started with a warm base underneath.

Flower Study #28- More Complex Floral Design-Classic Urn

I'm moving along in my flower design class and finished the week with a more complex arrangement that I decided to paint this weekend. A key point I'm learning in the class is to have a mass of weight lower in the arrangement for balance and stability and then use the lighter weight foliage for movement and texture. Many of the design principles make sense as I relate them to how I would think about composition of a painting. Since this was more complex than most of my earlier studies, and I really wanted an opportunity to work on brushwork for the foliage, I decided to do it closer to life size and did a 16 x 20 painting.

Here's the finished painting  (still a bit wet, so sorry about the glare in the photo):

Flower Study #29
Classic Urn
16 x 20 Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello


Here was the actual floral arrangement I made after my class this week which I used as a model for the painting:

I was pretty pleased with how both the arrangement and the painting turned out. It was interesting to paint something else I had already created. I definitely had a deeper sense of knowing the flowers and foliage, having handled them to make the arrangement and also knowing why I put things where I did in the arrangement reinforced decisions about where to place things in the painting composition.

If I were to do it again, one thing I might do differently is add more dark, cooler leaves first then, lay more light leaves over them to add a bit more depth. But overall, it was a fun exercise on 2 levels- creating the arrangement and creating the painting.

Many thanks for my floral design instructor John Grady Burns for letting me borrow his gorgeous urn and for his wonderful instruction. But most of all for sharing his passion for beauty and flowers.

Flower Study #27- Rose Topiary

Flower Study # 27
Rose Topiary
9 x 12 Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello


If you have been following my blog, you may recall that I am taking a program to learn floral design. It's partly for fun and partly to help get ideas for more intricate and interesting floral arrangements that I can set up for my floral and still life painting subjects rather than just pick up a pre-made bouquet at the grocery store and work with that.

This week I did a rose topiary in class, shown below. It was a lot of fun and I find that I can use much of my art design knowledge in floral design- its just a different (3D) medium. There are some differences, like sometimes in floral arranging if you are doing a centerpiece for a table, you want it to be symmetrically balanced, so it looks even from all viewpoints but in painting, I rarely go for symmetry- in fact it's something I tell myself to avoid so that my compositions can be more dynamic with an uneven division of space.

After I took my arrangement home, I set it up in my studio in front of a white board and side lit it to paint from while the flowers were still fresh. I was working on a small panel to do a quick study so had to compromise on some of the height which I regret, but overall was happy to get the feel of the rose topiary in a suggestive way without having to report every last petal.

Flower Study #26 Blue Hydrangeas in a glass vase

Flower Study #26
Blue Hydrangeas
6 x 8
Oil Painting on Panel
by Pat Fiorello

Tried the opposite of study 25 here, That one was light hydrangeas in a dark vase against a dark background and in this one the flowers are dark relative to the lighter background.  Same flowers, totally different look and feel.
Which do you prefer?