My first thoughts in looking at the brief for this exercise was where am I going to find some flowers. It is autumn and there is not a lot of flowers in the garden currently. However I did find a few daisy type flowers and arranged these with some poppy seed heads in a mug. I arranged this against a book and a vase. I first took a photograph of the arrangement to see how the image looked when framed.
Happy with the arrangement a made a few quick sketches to see how I could capture it on paper and started to think about what media I would use.
Something in between Compositions 1 & 3 looked to be what I was looking for. I decided to use acrylic paints and to create a dark ground. Dark ground created I pencilled the outline of the composition and then proceeded to work up the painting. Three of the stages are shown below.
My aim was to try to make the yellow flowers jump out of the painting and also to contrast with the red of the vase and table cloth. The final painting is below. I did need to make some adjustments to the top of the vase as the perspective was not correct. Overall I am pleased with how the painting turned out. It was close to how I had imagined it in my minds eye. The flowers do jump out at you and I feel I have managed to capture some of their life. I was also pleased with how I managed to depict the book with the cover conveyed with a few simple brush stokes. The lettering is slightly less successful as the perspective isn’t quite right. I didn’t choose to include the book Moby Dick to convey any kind of intellectual gravitas to the painting or to me. It just happened to be the book I was reading at the time. In fact I have put it down half way through as I have been finding it hard work, I tend to read late at night in bed when my brain is not at its best. Lastly I feel that reflections in both the vase and mug are not quite a convincing as the rest of the painting but I decided to resist from overworking and leave the painting as is.
Mark Taylor "Painting 1" 