I am inspired by Margaret Mee, one of the great British explorers and botanical illustrators of our time. She painted orchids and wildlife in the jungles of Brazil. Her beautiful paintings thrill me which is why I bought her book and decided to see what it takes to paint an orchid in my own studio to give as a gift to my sister Pam.
I started the project with my mechanical pencil, a pad of tracing paper and a live orchid. The preliminary line drawing is always the most time consuming part of the project. You want to get the basic shape right at stage in order to finish the painting. I left the orchid in my studio and went to bed.
In the morning I came out to find all of the flower heads had dropped onto the table in the middle of the night! I thought how often did this sort of thing happen to explorer's in the jungles surrounded by mosquitoes and everything else to think about. All I had to do was I ran out and bought the replacement orchid, a purple Phalaenopsis to finish the project.
While debating whether to paint the orchid in watercolor, gouache, or acrylic paints I did color swatch comparisons. My sister Pam likes the more opaque bright colors, so I decided to make test swatches of all my colors of paints to see how they would look. I also was trying a new Canson 140 lb watercolor paper that someone gave me as a gift to see how I like it. It is a smooth surface that works nice for all three medium, except the watercolor which tends to feel a little dreary compared to using the Arches. The paper tended to make the watercolor grit more obvious, but worked nicely for the gouache and the acrylic.
The final image is framed and matted and up on the wall for the family to enjoy!
