NYC Photos - Botanical Gardens Conservatory

The New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx has a large conservatory greenhouse with many rooms. When we were there in early April, much of it was dedicated to their famous orchid show (photos of that to come in later blog posts!), but they also still had some of their general collection available for viewing in the conservatory as well.

The photos below are from the tropical greenhouse rooms (not including the orchid pictures, which will come later):

I'm not sure what most of these flowers are, but I did recognize the bougainvillea (the pink tree flowers), as well as the calla lilies and waterlilies. 

More photos of the other rooms in the conservatory greenhouse to come soon!

Brent's Custom Watercolor Bouquet Painting

In early June, I had another commission come in through this Etsy listing for a custom watercolor bouquet, purchased by a husband for his wife on their anniversary.

Brent requested that I include their wedding date somewhere on the painting, and supplied me with photographs to work from of his wife's wedding bouquet, which was a tightly bound bouquet of calla lilies.

I started, as always, by lightly tracing the outline of the bouquet onto watercolor paper. Then I taped it to the table. (If I'd been thinking, I also would have traced the wedding date onto the bouquet at that point, but I forgot to do so until later - which is why I ended up having to transfer the digits onto the paper instead of tracing them.)

Then I did a light wash to get the general colors down.

And started building up layers of darker, brighter colors.

I decided to put the date on top, in the same color purple/pink as the insides of the calla lilies. I transferred the date onto the watercolor paper by printing the date out onto computer paper, coloring the back of the computer paper with graphite pencil, lining it up where I wanted it to go, and then tracing over the printed ink with a pen, pushing the graphite down onto the watercolor paper with pressure.

If you squint, you can see the faint graphite outline of the numbers on the watercolor paper.

Then I painted in the date:

I used some white acrylic paint to lighten up certain parts of the calla lilies so that it better matched the photograph, and then decided there was too much white acrylic in the upper left corner, and so added another layer of green/brown watercolor, and then a final bit of thinned white acrylic on top of that.

I also used some white/yellow acrylic to add in the only visible stamen in the center of one of the flowers.

Here's the final painting (above and below): 

Once it was dry, I peeled the masking tape off, flattened the painting for a few days under a pile of books, and then packaged it up to ship it out to Brent in Alabama.

Lauren's Custom Watercolor Bouquet Painting

I recently had an order from this Etsy listing in my shop for another custom watercolor bouquet painting. This one was ordered by a bridesmaid for the bride, and given as a wedding gift. I made a little certificate for the bridesmaid to print out and give her friend, and then after the wedding when the bride's photographs came in, the bride emailed me a picture of her bouquet to work from.

(Side note: Some of the photos below have weird shadowy lines across them... I don't know why, but when I try to take photos with my phone when I'm working on artwork in the basement, I frequently have this problem. I don't know if it is an issue with my phone, or with the flickering fluorescent lights downstairs, but it's really annoying. I often had to try several times to take a picture, testing different angles, to see if I could get a shot with as few of those weird shadows as possible.)

Because my last custom watercolor bouquet painting went so well, I did a similar process for this one. I printed out the photo to size for the 8"x10" paper I had to paint on, cut out the bouquet, and traced it onto the watercolor paper. Then I sketched in details of where the flowers and leaves were, without that traced outline.

Then I started layering soft colors, just to block out where all the colors would go, using a mostly wet-on-wet technique (meaning that all the edges stayed "fuzzy," and blended into each other within the outline of the whole bouquet).

Then I went through with more saturated color, to get down the deep reds and oranges and greens and purples in this bouquet.

It took several layers to build up this color - and in some places I worried that I used too many layers. Instead of just "going big" from the beginning with highly saturated color, I built it up too gradually, giving it more of a muddy effect. The oranges in particular had this problem. Some of the leafy green part of the bouquet also got too dark, and I wanted to lighten it up a bit.

Enter the acrylic paints. Since watercolor is translucent, adding more layers on top of dark colors can not lighten it up. You need something opaque, like special opaque watercolors, or acrylic. I used acrylic.

I mixed some orange and red together to go over the bright flowers that needed more brightness, and I used white (mixed with green, or other colors), to add in some highlights, especially to the little branches of green leaves. I tried to keep the acrylic paint soft (blending it into the watercolor with water) so that it wouldn't stand out too much and so that the painting would keep its watercolor effect.

And here it is - the finished 8"x10" painting! I used masking tape to keep it flat against my gatorboard while I painted. At this point, I peeled the tape off, and cut the paper down to size (I was using a 9"x12" piece of paper, so that I could put tape on the outer edges like that). Because some of the tape peeled up as the paper was wet, it was not as flat as I had hoped. I had to flatten it more with an iron. A few minutes with heat, and then a few days under a pile of heavy books, and the painting was more or less flat again.

If you are interested in your own custom painting (or drawing! - I can do this with colored pencils as well, if that's more your style), check out my Etsy shop.

Custom Watercolor Bouquet Painting
Custom Colored Pencil Drawing