I’m so excited about these brand new flower paintings! They just got photographed today, and are available for art licensing. I haven’t worked with oils in a long time; almost 2 years ago I took a plein air oil painting class with Brenda Pinnick. She helped me get so much more comfortable with working in oils!

Then Covid happened, and I just didn’t have much of an opportunity to paint in the last year. Oil painting takes more focus for me, so that was definitely out. But – being back in studio these days, and having my studio take shape as an actual for reals cozy creative space for a change…

One thing I learned in my class with Brenda Pinnick was creating a “sketch” of the oil painting using a really light color and odorless mineral spirits to lighten things up. It helps you to see where your painting is going, and lets you start working on contrast so things stand out.

The blue I used for my sketch felt wrong for sketching the yellow flowers, so I used just a touch of that and then sketched the rest of them using a cool lemon yellow.

You’ll notice I’m not working from life for these paintings! These flower paintings are based on a bouquet we picked up for Joy on her birthday this year; I’ve been struggling with my art from life feeling too stiff and uptight. In trying to fix that, I made two loose marker renderings of the bouquet to use as my guide.

Once that initial underpainting is finished, it’s time to start working on building up colors on the oil painting. I started working on these two flower paintings about three weeks ago – it takes a long time for each layer to dry. But also, working artist and mom life! Some days I would only have 20 minutes to add something to my art pieces between staying on top of illustration projects and taking care of our kids.

It was really nice to have an art studio during these pieces, because I could leave them set up, along with my jar of odorless mineral spirits and oil painting palette at the ready anytime I could make my way over to the easel to do the next step.

I love acrylics for the fast dry time, but I super love oil painting for the slow and steady approach.

Once I worked up the lighter colors in the painting, making sure to layer colors everywhere I could to create depth in my work, I started adding more contrast between lights and darks.

I’ll be honest the early stages of these paintings felt super wimpy to me. But I stuck with it to see where it went, and I’m glad I did because everything really started to pop once I started working in some shading and areas of darker colors.

As I continued to add layers of color, I realized I was getting pretty close to my marker rendering I was using as a guide. It looked good, but I was really hoping for something more dramatic in the background. So I decided to add onnnnnne more layer of a mix of pthalo blue and a dark purple whose name I can’t remember along with just a touch of black. I love the drama and high contrast it added!

Spring Hope 1
11” x 14”
Oil on canvas board

Available for sale for $250.
Also available for art licensing.

Please email stephcalvertart@gmail.com if interested in this floral painting!

Spring Hope 2
11” x 14”
Oil on canvas board

Available for sale for $250.
Also available for art licensing.

Please email stephcalvertart@gmail.com if interested in this floral painting!