floral Archives - Page 2 of 8

Roses in Artwork: Feature Friday 10

Published on November 25, 2022November 25, 2022 by kmgunnart10 Comments

I am on a rose kick this week! Roses are such popular flowers and subjects for artwork due to their beauty and elegance – and having a pleasing fragrance helps the real flower’s popularity in bouquets. While I have drawn and painted single roses, I had not yet tackled drawing or painting an entire bouquet of roses. This is in the process of changing, courtesy of my recent experiment with text-to-image software and digital art.

Everything is coming up roses

Sprinkled in among the three new rose bouquet computer-generated images will be blogging friends’ posts featuring roses in artwork in various media. I also wish to note that new hand-drawn and hand-painted art will be created and posted within the next month – before I talk to my Mom again on the phone. Yesterday, she did not beat around the bush or try to sugarcoat her opinion when she immediately asked me when I plan to get my paints back out and make real art instead of playing around on the computer and posting that. Mom knows how to use a clue-by-four!

Pink roses

It should be no secret that pink is my favorite color. So of course the first bouquet of roses I prompted the software to generate was specifically pink. No modifiers, just “bouquet of pink roses in vase on table,” if memory serves me correctly.

This was only the second image I prompted the program to create, and I felt pretty lucky to get something that looked correct. Being a digital image, there is no original artwork available, but you can get art prints from my Pixels store. If you prefer to wear the art you buy, then take a look at my RedBubble shop options for this image.

If this is not enough pink roses for you, you can always take a look at Tatiana’s Spanish rose, a close-up photograph with enough detail the little ant on one of the rose petals is in clear focus. She found this pair in a garden in Andalusia, Spain. And on the subject of pink rose petals, Sharon Cummings beefed up her description of her rose petal mandala artwork at my request. (Sharon recently won a spot on one of Fine Art America’s billboards, and they even put that one near her in Tampa.)

Red roses

Red roses will be very popular come mid-February. While this won’t win me any points with the independent florists, I think it would be better to gift your Valentine with a rose that won’t wilt – in the form of artwork! Here is another lucky combination of text prompt and random number from the computer program that features red roses.

bouquet of red and pink roses with green foliage in blue vase on table — Roses in Blue Vase, computer-generated artwork

Buy your art prints of this beautiful bouquet through my Pixels store. Get your apparel and accessories with this image at my RedBubble shop. Again, being digital, there is no original painting or drawing available (yet).

If you need a little assistance getting into a romantic Valentine’s mood, check out Steve Heap’s flower photography where he revisits a red rose bouquet he had waiting with champagne for his wife’s birthday in 2012. He does his own version of digital art by using software filters on his photography.

Bouquet of multiple colored roses

In the process of searching for just the right set of modifiers for my text prompt, I noticed two that just go together like chocolate and peanut butter: romanticism (the art movement) and …. Thomas Kincade. Seriously, that would be how I would describe Kincade’s painting style in just one word. No “neo-” prefix, but straight up Romanticism. While he did mostly landscapes, I feel that soft, lovely style is best suited for floral artwork. When I did not specify which color of roses I wanted, I got this lovely image.

a very classic image of a bouquet of different colored roses in a fancy vase on a table, done in the Romanticism style with a Thomas Kincade look — Classic Roses in Vase, digital art

I must admit, I like this one. Not only because the notion of time-shifting Thomas Kincade back to the Romantic period of European oil painting and having him paint flowers appeals to me. Except for that odd but of red in the middle of the bouquet, this may well be the closest that computer program has come to generating the image in my mind. I may break out my oil paints and try this one myself (but after I do the yellow roses in pastel).

Meanwhile, if you want this classic bouquet of roses as an art print, get it at my Pixels shop. If you want it on a shirt or accessories for you home and person, it is available at my RedBubble shop. Again, no original of the digital artwork.

Finally, if you are in search of a perfect rose, Jim Hughes believes he has taken the perfect photograph of a perfect rose. The technical details sailed right over my head, but I do think that is a very good portrait style photo of an elegant rose. Be sure to read the backstory on said rose as well.

I hope all y’all have enjoyed this virtual cornucopia of roses in artwork! It may seem early to be thinking about Valentine’s Day flowers, but I want to be ready for 2023.

Yellow Roses in Purple Vase

Published on November 22, 2022November 23, 2022 by kmgunnart6 Comments

First, believe it or not, this is a computer-generated image. I’ve been working for a while on trying to get some classic floral still life style images from the text-to-image software I’ve been playing around with, and after exhausting a certain look, I decided to try some different modifiers to the same basic text prompt.

I’ll cover this other style on Friday, but this particular image gets its own post for the simple fact I will be working on doing it by hand in the next week. Even more inspiring to me than the Sunset Palms image, this is a simple but elegant floral still life composition of a bouquet of yellow roses in a purple vase, sitting on a wood table. It is the complementary colors that make this idea pop.

Inspiring digital artwork

Picture of woman holding framed art print Yellow Roses in Purple Vase — Yellow Roses in Purple Vase, digital artwork available as an art print

But first, the important links for print products to buy. I have it on most products at my Pixels store as well as art prints. It doesn’t looks right on objects where the printing is horizontal in orientation. I recommend getting art prints from there because Pixels is owned by Fine Art America, who are big in the art print world. For those who enjoy wearing artwork, I recommend my RedBubble shop. My sister and mother both recommend them and are repeat customers.

The search for a good rose image

No surprise to long-time blog followers here, but I personally love yellow roses. I’ve been trying to paint or draw the “perfect” yellow rose piece since the day after I picked my art back up, and I have a couple watercolor paintings I did one to two years ago – Electric Yellow Rose and Yellow Rose. (If you buy the originals, you can rename them. I don’t try to be cute with what I name my artwork.) While I’ve played around with the idea in pastel and colored pencil, I have not accomplished anything I want to share. I think part of that is a matter of finding a good reference photo for it, because buying a nice bouquet of roses in a pretty vase each time I want to paint or draw would get rather expensive.

Enter the text-to-image digital artwork idea

So, what does an artist who lives on her veterans’ disability pay do in this situation? Well, I gave in to curiosity about the whole text-to-image software that so many people misname “artificial intelligence.” It is not intelligent. It just generates images based on your text prompt plus a style filter and any modifiers you use from the lists of phrases that will get you certain looks.

First, I tried the basic text prompt “bouquet of yellow roses” without any modifiers, and got a bunch of images that more-or-less fit that. The biggest variation is in that hard-to-define quality of composition. One was good, while the rest were mediocre at best. Here is the one I liked best.

Using modifiers in the text prompts

Not completely satisfied with this, I began to experiment with different modifiers to see what kind of image style I could get from which modifier. Some modifiers are specific art movements; some are specific artists’ names (and some of those are still alive and still painting), and others are descriptions like “dynamic lighting,” which is one of my favorites. No “chiaroscuro” or Edgar Degas, though my favorites are romanticism and Thomas Kincade, a combination that makes some very pretty images that don’t have much variation.

romantic yellow roses in vase on table — Romantic yellow roses in glass vase on table

Another style modifier I tried was Renaissance painting, which certainly has that feel to it, and I may experiment with that style further, but first I wanted to see how well (or how poorly) the software handled the idea of simulated pastels. These are soft pastels, not oil pastels, and I was disappointed to not find any famous pastellists in the artist list like Edgar Degas or Mary Cassat. Fellow Impressionist powerhouse Claude Monet was on the list, so on a whim I used his name along with pastels as the “medium” used and Impressionism as the style. I also specified the color scheme as yellow and purple. Here is the four-pack of images generated:

four computer-generated images using my text prompt — four computer-generated images using the text prompt “*bouquet of yellow roses in fancy vase on table dynamic lighting yellow and purple pastels impressionism Claude Monet”*

A bit of variation here, and while the first image is nice enough, it’s the second one (top right) that has captured my imagination. It is so close to being good! I think it is just missing that tiny little bit – perhaps toning down the background colors to make the focal point more attention-grabbing. I’ll also be tweaking that table, perhaps more of a tan than yellow, so it looks more like oak (like the image above).

Bouquet of Yellow Roses in a Purple Vase

So that is the development of a vague idea, “bouquet of yellow roses,” into a piece of digital artwork that you can purchase and I can use as a springboard to create my next work of art in pastel. I am thinking of giving my soft pastel set a proper workout for this, with details added in with pastel pencils. Until then, have a pleasant Thanksgiving week, and watch this space for a new Feature Friday.

Christmas Digital Artwork

Published on November 15, 2022November 15, 2022 by kmgunnart12 Comments

Alright, fellow procrastinators: It is now the proverbial “last minute” as far as ordering custom greeting cards to send out for the winter holiday season. It does not matter if you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukah, Yule, Kwanza, or just the generic Festivus – it’s getting to be crunch time for ordering custom gifts or greeting cards if you want to receive them in time to send them back out! On my end, it’s crunch time for creating and posting Christmas artwork. That means I need to post up some digital artwork for the holidays since I procrastinated too long on the painting I started (in August).

Custom artwork for the holidays

I did post up a handful of hand drawn and hand painted artwork last year, and those are all still available. See my Winter Snowman, the two matching ornaments, and (my personal favorite) the colored pencil Christmas Candle for purchase links. My intent was to add to the collection, but I really do have problems getting into the holiday spirit in the summer. I guess I should not move to the southern hemisphere any time soon. Instead, I suppose I’ll just do my usual “one holiday at a time!” that has been my mantra for so many years, and promote this year’s Christmas and Yule artwork next summer. The other option is:

Digital art for the holidays

Honestly, if you have the patience to fine tune your text prompts and modifiers, then digital art is the quick fix. Once you have zeroed in on a good target prompt phrase, then you can have the software churn out multiple versions and simply choose the ones that have the right look and correct object shapes. I did some more playing and tweaking over the weekend, and here is the cream of the crop, so to speak.

Decorated Christmas Tree digital artwork

In a way, this one was both the easiest and the most finicky to get a version that didn’t have me saying, “It’s almost good except for …” I have a virtual folder at the NightCafe site with a good-size bunch of also-rans, but this one was one of the first and also one of the prettiest images of a fully decorated Christmas tree. I did need to crop off the sides, but the result fits the 8:10 ratio perfectly.

You can order this image as a fine art print, or printed on a greeting card, puzzle (oh yeah, this one makes a great puzzle!) or home decor items at my Pixels store or at my RedBubble shop. Being digital art, there is no original to buy, but I may be inspired to try my brush at it in the darker days ahead.

Victorian Christmas Scene digital image

This one has a bit of a backstory to it. What I was attempting to get was some kind of image of a species of aloe plant often called a century plant with Christmas ornaments hung on the wide, flat leaves. It’s something you see down here in Florida, since southern pine trees are tall and sparse and very fast-growing (which makes them ideal for the lumber industry). There are a couple houses within a few miles of me that do this on a semi-regular basis, but I have never stopped and snapped a photo of this to use as a reference for a painting. Next time those houses decorate that way, I will certainly get a snapshot – even if it isn’t good enough to post here.

So, I used the text prompt “century aloe Christmas decorations,” and the software had no idea what it was supposed to display. Along with three that were just weird, I had this image, which I call Victorian Christmas Scene. It looks very quaint, like it ought to be a color plate in an edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Until, that is, you get a closer look at the greenery. Yup, some of that greenery is aloe plants.

Victorian Christmas Scene, digital computer-generated artwork — Victorian Christmas Scene, digital artwork

The proportions are a little off on some things, but overall it makes a very pleasant picture. The sky certainly looks like a winter afternoon, and all the lights and garlands lend a festive air to it, even though there are no people on the street at all. The bunch of aloe-like plant in the lower right corner aren’t obvious until you are putting it together as a jigsaw puzzle – which I am doing digitally since I have three cats in the house. For fun, here is a screenshot of this as a puzzle.

Victorian Christmas Scene as a jigsaw puzzle (in Microsoft Jigsaw) — Victorian Christmas Scene as a jigsaw puzzle

Like the others, you can order this image as an art print, a puzzle, apparel, or home dec item either at my Pixels shop or at my RedBubble shop. Like my other digital creations, there is no hardcopy original, and I really don’t see myself sitting down and drawing or painting this one. It’s a pretty street scene, but cityscapes just don’t appeal to me.

Red Poinsettias, the Christmas flower

Y’all had to know I’d get to this one eventually. It’s time for some red poinsettias, the official flower of Christmas. There are many reason why this flower is so popular, but the main one is all about the color combination of cheery red petals with yellow centers (stamen?) framed by the rich green leaves. Add in a strand of Christmas lights, and you get my next piece, unoriginally titled Red Poinsettias.

Red Poinsettias digital artwork featuring the Christmas flower with lights around the flowers — Red Poinsettias, digital artwork featuring the cheery Christmas flowers with lights

My husband chose this one of the two poinsettias images that turned out well, saying the lights and softer focus look goes better with the other two. “It’s like a visual theme,” he explained. I’ll roll with it, since I asked his opinion because I was having trouble choosing. He’s an artist also! Links to buy prints and home accessories at my Pixels shop and for a selection of apparel as well as more accessories at my RedBubble shop.

More digital artwork to come!

I am still not all the way through the categories from just my first two weeks of playing with the program that generates these images. I have a lot of flower bouquet images, and wanted to spotlight those in their own post. It looks like there will be at least two flower posts now, as this past weekend I hit upon a combination of modifiers that I really like. I’ll keep working on those posts, as well as working on refining my text prompts to see if I can get even better images, but I really wanted to get these up for my fellow procrastinators to order those custom Christmas cards … or you’ll have to wait until next year unless your family and friends are used to getting holiday cards in January.

Feature Friday 7: Our first virtual art walk

Published on October 14, 2022October 14, 2022 by kmgunnart7 Comments

Feature Friday is back, and with a new twist this time. This week, we’ve all made a post of our personal favorites from our art portfolios, and today that is what we will all be linking. The inspiration for this is something art galleries do in the physical brick-and-mortar world, the art walk. In between links, I am posting some floral snapshots from before the hurricane with the story behind the flower at the end.

The art walk downtown

Going back to when we lived up in Clarksville, Tennessee, the downtown art galleries got together on the first Friday of the month to host an art walk after normal business hours. Along with being open in the evening, most of the galleries also had small refreshments available, and some would arranged a themed display when the artworks in their gallery had one. In particular, I remember one when my husband was home (as opposed to being in South Korea or Afghanistan) and my son still lived at home, and it was a beautiful late spring evening when the temperature was perfect and it seemed everyone we saw was in a good mood.

September-blooming white spider lily — Day 2 was the first decent snapshot I got

Our virtual art walk

Starting the week off, Jim Hughes posts his favorite photographs from his portfolio. His main criteria for this list is: he had a plan, a mental image, then a photo. The nautilus shell is cool. I think I like his funky-colored flower (zinnia?) best though.

two spider lily blooms open - and a cat lounging on the railing — Can’t crop out the lazy cat on the rail, but I really wanted a snapshot of one of the flowers in the sun

Jo from Siena Blue has posted her recent favorites in watercolor and gouache, along with an acrylic painting and one of her drawings from this year’s Inktober, done in ink and colored with coffee. I think I like her seashell best of all, and not only because of the unusual medium.

spider lily with four of the six blooms open — day 4 – and at this point I had figured out the plant was opening one bloom a day

Cannot forget my post from yesterday about which paintings I think make excellent jigsaw puzzles.

Finally, we have Steve from Backyard Image, with his best photos that are not from his back yard. The two that feature the color pink are my favorites – one the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. and the other that gorgeous sunset sky from his Alaska cruise this year.

About that spider lily plant

We bought this property in the summer of 2012, spent a week’s leave down here in September of the same year, then moved in for good in February of 2013. In the almost ten years we’ve lived here, I have never seen this plant under my window even bud. I had not idea what it would look like if it did.

Then, a couple days after the autumn equinox, I noticed it was going to bloom.

Once the first bud opened, I knew I had seen pictures of this flower before, and the name that sprang to my mind was spider lily. Yup, a quick search showed I was right … but there are quite a few species that are called spider lily, and most are white like mine, so I began to read which ones bloom in September and I think I have nailed it down to Hymenocallis occidentalis, also called Hymenocallis caroliniana though Wikipedia says this in incorrect while another botanical site says it is. Either way, its common name is certainly spider lily, and the possible reason it didn’t bloom until this year is probably because this summer has been very wet. Several of the lookalike spider lilies for Florida says they prefer wet ground, and this may be the first August and September when we got enough rain.

Yes, there is a spider lily painting in my head now. It’s just a matter of time before I wrestle it onto paper and canvas.

Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month

Published on October 2, 2022October 3, 2022 by kmgunnart14 Comments

Yesterday was the first of October, but it didn’t really click for me until I ran into town to pick up some critter feed and saw a couple of businesses with the flocks of plastic pink flamingoes: October is breast cancer awareness month, and locally that means it’s time for Pink-Out Putnam again. Local participating businesses will not only decorate with the standard pink ribbons, but since this is Florida it means there will be a population explosion of those wonderfully tacky plastic pink flamingo yard ornaments.

Along with pink being one of my favorite colors to wear, and flamingoes being one of my favorite birds to paint, there is a darker personal connection for me. Both of my mom’s sisters and my dad’s surviving sister have all gone through breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Thankfully, all three are still alive to tell about it, but having women on both sides of my family get diagnosed leaves me at a higher risk of developing this myself. (For the record, my appointment for my next mammogram in early November. VA healthcare system takes this seriously.)

My pink flamingo watercolor series

Last year, I did a series of six watercolor paintings that featured flamingoes in or near water as part of an art challenge, which included my first place winning Flamingo in Rippled Water. I’ll be taking the series to various local businesses to see if any new small mom-and-pop places would like to display them.

Pink flower paintings

Pink flowers are also on my list of favorite things to paint, and I have some of those to share for this very pink post. I did a cherry blossom watercolor painting this spring, actually a little earlier than they bloomed, but it is very much an annual thing and I love to see photos and paintings of them in March. I also did two pink rose pieces last year: one in watercolor and one in oil pastel. Gathering up the links for this post made me realize I have not yet blogged one of my pink flower paintings yet …

Pink Hibiscus

First things first: yes, if you look closely you can see the grid I used for sketching the proportions out properly. I had used a red watercolor pencil to do this, thinking when I painted over it would dissolve. It was a lesson learned. Not all pigments in watercolor pencils will disappear with regular application of water. I should note that this was the last time I did my grid-and-sketch directly on my watercolor paper. Now I sketch in one of my sketchbooks and use graphite transfer paper to make my marks on the watercolor paper. The punchline here is that people who see it don’t seem to care. Feedback on this paintings has always been quite positive despite the graphite outline and grid lines showing. I guess folks feel that shows this was painted by a person and not a software program.

Purchase info so you too may “Pink Out” like Putnam

Along with overlooking this piece here on the blog, I had also forgotten to upload it to my gallery over at Daily PaintWorks, which is the online venue where I prefer to sell my original artwork. This has been rectified. I had also forgotten to upload it to my RedBubble shop, but I fixed that as well now, so those of y’all who want your RB swag with this painting can have at it. Finally, for those who want an art print larger (or smaller) than the original 10 by 10 inches can order it at my Pixels shop.

So pick your favorite pink painting for Breast Cancer Awareness month. Please feel free to share this post, because this is an issue that has affected my family … and perhaps yours as well. My county will be decorated to the nines with pink ribbons, pink signs, and of course plastic pink flamingoes everywhere, and I invited everyone to join us! I have at least one new pink flamingo painting in my mind already, so stay tuned.

Category: floral