Inspired by Nature – Finishing a Series of Paintings

This week, I celebrate a big finish – the series of ten nature-inspired oil paintings that I started in July!

The series has four small, four medium-sized, and two big paintings. All of them are some kind of floral landscapes.

Small Paintings + Video!

I worked from big to small. I like to start the series boldly and then pick ideas from them for smaller pieces. This is the last painting – Rapunzel of the Garden:

Because of the small size, this painting required very thin brushes and a lot of precision. Here’s a 1-minute video where you can see me painting it:

These are the rest of the small paintings:

I like the idea of having a secret tiny treasure, so I try to make the small paintings look like that.

Medium-Sized Paintings

The medium-sized paintings are in two parts: two are smaller, and two are bigger. I like to paint “sisters” – so two paintings in a row or at the same time so that they complement each other. It’s an easy way to create variation in the series.

I like to name each painting of a series so that the titles have some kind of similarities. For example, the previous series all had celestial bodies in their names, and the one before that was a V-series – all the titles started with the letter V. This time, the similarity is not perhaps so evident, but it’s there – all the titles have a genitive form.

Four seasons are also present in this series. Expressing seasons is an idea that I could repeat in future series too.

In every series, there are paintings that have seeds for the next one. In this series, I like how abstract I went with Winter Night’s Poem, and the natural look in The Echo of Moss inspires me a lot. These two will set the foundation for the next series.

Usually, I am exhausted after finishing a series, but this time not so much. I have many ideas and already ordered the canvases. I like to plan the size of the series and the sizes of the paintings beforehand. Before I even begin to make any background studies, I have ideas on interiors they could fit or galleries or exhibitions they could go to, and decide the size based on those.

Big Paintings

Even if all my paintings are my children, I can’t help picking my personal favorite of the series. In this one, it’s Tiger’s Eye.

Tiger’s Eye is a sister to another big painting – Queen of the Night.

I like the drama in these big paintings.

Nature Inspired The Series of Paintings

Often, people ask an artist: “What inspires you?” and the artist responds, “Nature.”

But I think that it’s really important for an artist to get more specific. For me, it’s the plants – who they want to be and what kind of world they hope to build. I love to imagine what kind of personalities plants have.

In the upcoming class Doll World, the plants become alive as flower girls!

Come to draw people in nature-inspired dresses – Sign up here!