I didn’t do any sketches.. I just studied these pictures and noted that the flowers are small and soft and translucent!
They come in blue and purple and some are pink! I even saw some pink ones at the floral section of Fresh Market a couple of weeks ago. I like the way some artists did a very loose painting of the flower.
Some are very realistic. Some are a close up which is great when trying to understand what exactly these little petals look like! I think it’s important to know the whole plant before trying to capture one with glass!
The pict that really caught my eye was of a lone MASON JAR (duh..that’s prolly what caught my eye!!!) holding a couple of hydrangeas! What I loved m ost about it was the way it was composed!
It’s off to the side and the blank space makes it more soothing and “open.”
I noticed that these flowers have large heart shaped leaves…and the one in my model photo didn’t have any.
I decided that I’d use this photo (from the fine folks at etsy shop: Laugh Love Photo.) as my inspiration for
color and composition, but I’d add the leaves to make it really look like a Hydrangea!
Enough study, time to create!
I knew I wanted to petals to have the same color and ethereal quality to them. And I knew I had some glass that could pull off the effect.
Don’t ask me where I found these things. I have no idea. It’s a hint as to how much glass I really have on hand at any given moment.
I have TONS! These little balls are thin. They are a lot like Christmas ornaments. I wanted to tint them a light pink color and for that I used Strawberry Spray Paint TINT (get it at michaels) A couple of quick squirts did the trick!
Then I crushed them with a hammer in a plastic bag. They broke up pretty easily. My hand is in there so you can see what little glass it yielded!
But thankfully, I didn’t need much!
Now it’s time to paint!
I gathered some paint colors and started painting really fast. I decided that the painting part of this piece would be more dominant than what I usually do.
I really wanted to end up with a painting that closely matched my inspiration photo.
I like what I painted! My canvas was wider that the photo I was using for reference..but I just “went with it.”
Now time to add the glass. Except.. when I put the beautiful, thinly transparent glass down, it got lost in the painting!
SO…the blurry photo shows you that I PULLED OFF the little glass flakes (I only put a couple of pinches worth down) and then WENT OVER the flowers with white paint.
I didn’t completely cover the painted flowers, but really..I wanted mostly white there. That way, the pretty pink glass would take precedence!
The pict above shows the re painted flowers on the left, and the nearly finished piece on the right. After I laid down the pink glass, I added bubbles to “fluff” it up.
Then I added leaves from spare wine bottles. I thought I’d end it there…I toyed with the thought of covering the blue mason jar with, well, a broken blue mason jar, but I didn’t want to take away from my strong painting! I needed more glass tho (go figure!!).
I instead, decided to cover the foreground with raw shapes of clear sheet glass. I knew at that moment. I was done! I signed it with an “M” in clear glass, lower right hand corner and mixed me up some resin!
Voila!
Thanks for creating with me!
I’ll have these notes and the final art piece hanging at The Shard Shop for the first coupla weeks in March!
Peace Love Glass
Mary