THE Arrangement

There was a wedding at my church a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon. When we arrived for our regular service the following day, we were overwhelmed by the beauty and the abundance of flowers. They were everywhere and they were magnificent! At the end of the service, parishioners were invited to take the flowers home, to give them to shut-ins, to share their beauty.

The next day, I received an email that said "Barbara brought some flowers home from church. Bring a BIG piece of paper to class. We'll be painting an enormous arrangement." I groaned . . .all the arrangements that I had seen were of white flowers . . .and there were so many! I was not looking forward to class that Tuesday.

I am NOT an easy flower painter. I get lost in so many petals.

So, imagine my surprise, when I arrived at class a day later to find, yes, an enormous arrangement - BUT they were NOT the white flowers. It was an amazing display of sunflowers and all sorts of color!

OK, still, I am NOT an easy flower painter (I said that before)  - what was I going to do with the overwhelming mass of color?

I decided to get out of my rut and experiment a bit.  A week or so before (when I had not been there) the class had taped sort of a grid on their paintings. Later they removed the tape and connected the squares to form a whole painting. It sounded like fun.

I started to tape and decided not to just do a rectangular grid. Sorry, I don't have a before picture here. I began to paint the flower display, purposefully leaving out a lot of the various flowers. It was just too much!

When the painting dried, I removed the tape and began connecting the arrangement. I added stems and greenery and voila! Not too bad after all.

"The Arrangement"   11x14 watercolor & ink    $125

To be continued . . .