Formative - Exhibition 2 prep - Birds of paradise…
I love birds of paradise and in fact all tropical birds but it made me begin to start thinking about why’s in which to expand out from the physical birds, although I still want them to be the focus of my pieces. I thought about what could go along side by birds of paradise and allow the bright vivid colours to flourish in my artwork. I then recalled the flower names bird of paradise after the multiple species of birds of paradise that it resembles.
These stunning flowers as vibrant in colour as well as form with long pointed petals similar to the winds and tail feathers of these birds I have been wanting to show and study further. I wondered how I could create these flowers to include in my work and perhaps make appear to be sprouting off the tree structure.
I began by creating wire structures of the flowers in a simplified form with crafting wire and pliers. I have show the structure below of the wirework I created after several different approaches of creating the shape in wire.
Once I found a successful shape achieved with the wire I went ahead and began to wrap stripes of tissue and glue around the petal shapes to make the 3 dimensional flowers. I made sure to keep the cratered inwards forming petal that’s key to the flowers formation.
Once I had covered the wire structure in tissue and glue, I allowed it to dry when if formed a stiff formation which was ready to paint. I looked at my reference pictures as well as making sure to go to the garden centre to view them in person also and began to decorate them with the acrylic paints, I wanted to allow an ombre to the petals much like they have in real life and also sections applied heavy handed and unblended for the texturing. I have shown the end results below.
Overall I am rather happy with how these flowers have turned out and feel they will be a real asset to my art piece . the colours or bold and high impact as well as the form being shapable to angle best on the branches in the desired position. I will be using between 3 and 5 of these on my tree piece. I think that any more would begin to overpower the p[ainting which all though not planned to be in the centre, it is still the key piece of this work.