Birds of Paradise II and III

[helenic]

This is what I've been working on the last week or so. They were commissioned after the K~nesis exhibition by my parents. Their favourite paintings in the exhibition were Dragonflower and Bird of Paradise, but those were the first to sell, so they asked if I could do a couple more for them to take with them when they moved to Belize. Since then they decided to randomly buy another of my paintings, so in the end they could only afford one of the two they'd originally commissioned. I decided to go ahead and paint both, though, because I'd started both of them, they wouldn't be hard to finish, and the tropical-themed paintings were very popular last summer so I hoped I'd be able to sell whichever painting they didn't want.

Bird of Paradise II (for sale)
10" x 10", oil and acrylic on canvas










Bird of Paradise III (sold)
10" x 10", oil and acrylic on canvas

These definitely fall into the "pretty" rather than "interesting" category of art, but I'm pleased with them, especially since I ended up doing them at incredibly short notice. The first one was done in a single long day, not counting the undercoat layer I'd done a few months previously. (This was entirely my own fault - I started these ages ago and then forgot about them completely, because I'm rubbish.) The undercoat technique worked well, though: I blocked out rough areas of colour in acrylic, with a small amount of quick shading, then allowed that to dry before painting the detail over it in oils. I actually ended up repainting the acrylic undercoat for the second one, as I wasn't happy with the accuracy of the first version. Acrylic dries so quickly that I could repaint the undercoat and then start in on the oils layer half an hour later. The acrylic layer boosts all the colours with extra vividness, and the layers of oil paint on top allow for a richness and translucency that you can't achieve in acrylics. I first used this technique with the two tropical K~nesis paintings; most of the artwork in the exhibition was pure acrylics, but I'm a stickler for fine detail and I ended up going back over Dragonflower and Bird of Paradise in oils to achieve the straight lines and smooth shading I like best.

I relied more heavily on the oils for these two new ones, because that's where I'm most comfortable, but the acrylics are great for quick fixes and bright tones. In fact I discovered, covering up a blue area with yellow acrylic (you can't do that in oil, it's too seethrough) that you can paint acrylic perfectly well over wet oil paint. That was worth discovering. I don't know if you can paint oil over wet acrylic, but since acrylic only stays wet for about ten minutes there's not much call to find out.

I'm still stuck on names for these. They're both of bird of paradise flowers, so I've just gone with Bird of Paradise II and III for the moment. But one of them looks more like a dragon and one of them looks more like a bird, so maybe Dragonflower II would be more appropriate for the first? Denny suggested that Launching and Landing would be good titles, and I like the idea of grouping them as a duo distinct from the K~nesis paintings. I reckon they both look like they're about to take off, though - I can't see II as coming into land, and anyway a landing is the upstairs corridor of a house. Anyone got any other ideas?

Comments

[the-waves.livejournal.com]

They're beautiful, I love the colours. I especially like the first one. There's something very pleasing about the red! :-)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Dad preferred the first one, and said that he was drawn to the reds, but mum strongly favoured the other one and she got her way. I was slightly worried that the red would unbalance the composition, but the orange sort of counterpoints it. So you end up with this balance of the warm colours in the SW/NE quadrants and cold colours in NW/SE, and pale tones in the east half and rich tones in the west. I like diagonal compositions. This kind of painting is ultimately quite boring to me, because there's no story behind it - it's purely playing with aesthetics - but I do like the general concept of a macro closeup which is more like an abstract colourscape than a recognisable image. Colour is so interesting! :)

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

Strelitzia has long been a favourite of mine - both to see growing, and to use in arrangements. These are flawless, and I find myself very much wanting one!

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Strelitzia! I hadn't heard that name before - it's pretty. Maybe that's what I should call them?

The wikipedia page also tells me that the flowers are pollinated by sunbirds. The birdlike flower in III doesn't look like an actual sunbird, but it does look how I'd imagine a sunbird to look. That's very pleasing :)

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

If memory serves, the name came about because they were the favoured flower of a queen of the House of Meckelberg-Strelitz (or something along those lines). Wait - you've read that already! There is another species in the genus, whose flowers are structurally very similar, only in black and white (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strelitzia_nicolai/). It's quite common in flower beds in malls in southern California.
As an aside, they're related to the flower in this icon!
If you called them "Strelitzia II" and "Strelitzia III", you'd have people tripping over the names! :D

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Goth strelitzia!! Awesome :)

I'm toying with "Strelitzia" and "Sunbird". Or maybe "Launching" and "Sunbird". Still undecided :)

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

And people ask me why I like plants... :D
IfWhen I get organised and scan in my old photo collections to my PC, I'll remember to E-mail you some of the ones that I took a few years ago of the goth ones. If you have patience and a heated conservatory, Thompson and Morgan sell seeds for both species!

[greenelephant.livejournal.com]

These are really lovely. I too especially am drawn to the first one. Your analysis/description of the composition is equally fascinating.

Out of curiosity, what have you set as the price for the first one?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thankyou :)

I haven't decided a price yet. Mum and dad were going to give me £300 for the pair, which was a reduced rate for me, but I was okay with it because they're family. They'll be giving me £150 for the one they're buying. I'd like a bit more than that if I was selling them to non-family though. I think I'm going to put the first one on etsy for £200, I just haven't created it as a new item in my shop yet.

[calnen.livejournal.com]

They're lovely :)
I think if we ever get the money together for a commission from you, it'll be something like these. I love the warm colours in the first one especially.

How do you decide how big to make a painting? Unless I'm confusing myself, the birds of paradise we saw last year was a lot bigger than ten inches. Why the change?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Warm colours are lovely, but I am a little bit in love with Prussian Blue at the moment. It's best with warm highlights though :)

In this case the size question is very banal, I'm afraid. Mum and dad asked for two paintings, with the same subject matter/colour feel as the two in the exhibition, but different compositions. They offered £300 for the pair. So I needed to be able to finish the two paintings in four days, which put a firm limit on how big they could be. I basically worked out how detailled the paintings were going to be, and then guessed how much canvas I could fill at that level of detail in two days per painting. So in this case I worked it out backwards from the price, which is unusual - normally I price something based on a mixture of how big it is, how long it took and how much I like it.

There's also the fact that the paintings Kristen and I did together are all pretty huge. Our collaborations tended to be big and joyous and free, with big brushes and bright colours and not much fine detail. If the canvasses were big enough for both of us to paint at the same time that was ideal. So the collaborative paintings are very different to my personal style. When I'm working on my own I like translucent layers of colour built up over time, I like fine detail and razor-sharp lines, and I like working in miniature. I know there's a basic level of detail which I find it almost impossible to go below, so I have to take into account how long it will take to paint detail over a whole canvas when I'm deciding how big to paint. I don't seem to be able to scale up - I can just do the same level of detail over a bigger area. It's interesting.

But yeah, normally the size of a painting is about what kind of visual impact I want the painting to have, and how long I fancy spending on it. With some paintings, being big or small is part of the composition and I need to fit my timescale/pricing around the image I want to create. With others, I just have an image in mind and I don't care what size it is, in which case I usually opt for small-medium so it doesn't take forever. My average painting size is much lower than the average size of my paintings with Kristen.

Anyway, thankyou! I'm glad you like it. :)

[i-am-toast.livejournal.com]

The first one is lovely and I particularly like the way you wrap the paintings over the edges of the box canvas. The last picture of that one makes me think of a lady taking off silk, although I've no idea why.

On another note, do you have any recommendations for good makes of brushes for fine detail? I'm going to invest in a decent set soon and, as I paint a lot of very fine detail, I tend to 'wreck' brushes quite quickly (or rather, a few hairs get scruffy and they're buggered for how I use them).

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

I really like the first one, with the big bold vibrant colours. Not sure about names. Paradise Flight / Paradise Night, since the second one has the cooler blue tones of evening?

(Actually, there's something rather pleasing about the picture of the first one lying at an angle on the dark fabric background.)

(S)

[velvet512.livejournal.com]

Brilliant work. Full of emotion.

[lemonmerchant.livejournal.com]

Aha!

He's such a clever fellow.