Painting Paradise

You'll often hear me say that I dislike or even fear painting - I plan to put this right eventually and will practice my technique. It is a reduced sense of control over the piece that I suppose I dislike. One day a picture of a secret peacock garden caught my attention in a book somewhere. It was so, so beautiful and I remember thinking to myself that I would never be able to recreate it (so why even try, right?). Luckily there's a side of me that rises to the challenge and finds all the more reason to persevere if something seems difficult or even impossible.

I can't find the original, though I'm sure that at one point all you had to do was to type "Peacock garden" into Google and it was one of the first results to pop up. I'm fairly certain that I used watercolour paint for this and it took about seven hours to create.

I would consider this to be one of my painting victories. I learned to enjoy creating the different textures, especially blending/mottling colours together for the rose bushes. I also enjoyed creating the shadows of the grasses in the water. One thing that stayed with me from painting this was that blending the same colour more than once is a real skill - as you can probably see, the sky is two different shades of blue; the downside of creating this piece across several art lessons.

What I also learned to appreciate was the feeling of this piece; it is very romantic and impressionistic. I realised that painting doesn't have to be perfect and that it can be better to give an almost dream-like quality to such works. In this sense I feel this painting is quite timeless and represents a place that I'd happily stumble upon. Prisma was great for manipulating the colours and textures to both amplify and alter the feelings that this picture evokes. I particularly like the stained glass window and mosaic effects. I also like that the different effects can shift the lightness of touch from my original to a richer, denser and more layered/textured composition.