Making of the Floral Affair Oil Painting

" Floral Affair" shown in a home setting

Floral affair is one of my smaller works of art. I almost always start with a thought in my mind of what I would like to paint. This was no different. Once I had scribbled the ideas and had a rough feel of what I wanted, I ventured out to different bushlands around Brisbane collecting references. Finding the secondary elements like flowers, leaves and fence mesh was the easy part. Variegated fairy wren was the one that took me a few months to find. After many unsuccessful attempts around Brisbane to capture the bird in desired pose, I finally came across one when I was visiting Girraween National Park. I finally had all the elements I needed to start the painting!

My painting backgrounds are usually shown with bokeh to add depth to the painting. Since I paint these soft blurred backgrounds with brush, it becomes easier for me to paint the entire background first especially if it’s a smaller painting. I had the background ready for this painting well before I had found the references for the main elements. This is unusual for me, but I knew exactly what I wanted as a background for Floral affair as it was developed purely out of my imagination, which I find is sometimes easier as I don’t have to worry about hunting for references.

Once I had collected the references, I was back to the drawing board with final details. After drawing up few compositions, I narrowed down on this final one. Sine the background was already painted, I chose to draw variations in actual size on paper first and then transfer the drawing to the main painting. This limits the mess as I can alter the drawings after they have been drawn in full size.

Once the drawings were on the board, I was ready to go through my primary scary ugly phases of the painting. Irrespective of how many paintings I do, I still get a bit nervous every time I go through the first couple of layers of paint. They always look dodgy and boring. Once I reach the colour modelling stage of the painting, I am in happy place. With this painting, I decided to get into the details of the bird early on. Doing so helped me relax a little bit.

This is always my favorite part. This is where I can see my painting come to life. While floral affair is a smaller oil painting, it did take me a while to complete the details. All the leaves, fine dew droplets on the flower and the bird feathers consumed a lot of time. But I think it was well worth it. You can see the result; I absolutely love it!

Floral Affair original painting is currently available (as of 27/10/2021). Please click on the image below to see the availability of the original painting. Original painting is beautifully framed in satin finish Megawood black colour frame. It was professionally framed by Kenmore Gallery, my local art gallery / framer.

This painting is also currently available as open edition paper print.

If you would like a similar wildlife or nature painting in a different size, colours etc, please feel free to use the below link to contact me. I would love to hear from you.