BobBlast #231

"Painting the Illusion of Flower Stems in a Glass Vase."

Welcome Back to Another BobBlast

This teaching demo will show you how I paint flower stems. It's a loose and painterly approach... and not to be a lesson on a botanical illustration. It's a painting!

First, I practice sketching a variety of flower vases and their shapes, to decide whether it will be clear glass or solid ceramic. The overall silhouette of both the vase and bouquet should be a strong, graphic composition. I find that most of my floral compositions fall into the ASYMMETRICAL/CRUCIFORM design.

Practice this early step until you are satisfied with the graphic impact of how the overall shape fits on the canvas or paper.

Next, decide on your Color Combination. Then decide where you want the one focal point flower to be... put it in now. Now it is time to paint stems!

The vase shape has already been established and appears to be a solid, dark color. However, I want the vase to be a clear, see-through glass. So, using the same color as the back wall (behind the vase), I do a bit of negative shape, or reductive painting within the vase. I don't paint the stems per se, I paint the spaces that are NOT stems. In other words, if I looked at a vase of flowers, I'd see the stems through the glass, then the background wall color. That's what I paint... not stems.

I make all this up - I don't actually copy a still life setup.

In previous BobBlasts, you saw me practice how I loosely paint a vase of abstract flowers. This video shows the final detailed step of how I create a more convincing image of stems. Don't be overly concerned about making a perfect illustration of
flowers in a glass vase.

Paint the enthusiasm and joy of a loose bunch of flowers.