Sometimes life gets busy and I don’t always paint, even though I know I need to do so to keep up my skills. When I have a painting going, I will work on it almost daily until it’s finished, even if it’s just a few minutes at a time. But sometimes when I finish a painting and am ready to start on a new one, I can’t find anything that really inspires me. Sometimes this can lead to long periods of not painting because I can’t find anything I want to paint. When I get into this rut, I look for florals.

I finished a painting about a week ago and didn’t want to get into that rut of not painting for a while, so I started looking for more inspiration the next day. But everything I wanted to paint, or thought I wanted to paint, I couldn’t find any reference photos that really inspired me. That’s when I turn to florals.

I always start with a color when I’m searching for inspirational flower pictures. I find that I most often paint pink or purple flowers, not that I don’t like pink and purple flowers, but flowers come in so many other colors as well. So lately I have been searching for anything but pink and purple. Most recently I typed in peach.

I love the really close up pictures of flowers, so anytime I find one like that, it really does make me want to paint it. Sometimes I’ll find a picture that I kind of like, but when I zoom in to a particular part of it, I really love it, The most recent painting I just finished was already zoomed in, and immediately upon seeing it I knew it was the one I wanted to paint.

When I am excited about a painting I find that I sit down much more often than when I am getting tired of a painting, which sometimes happens when I am painting something someone else thought I should paint, but I didn’t really feel like I wanted to paint that subject, or I couldn’t find a reference photo that I really liked. This particular painting didn’t take long because I was excited to paint and I loved the peachy color.

This picture took about 3-4 hours total to paint, but I worked on it about 30-40 minutes a day over the course of the week. There are things I love, things I would change, but overall, I love the peach color and finished piece. I am grateful to all the photographers out there who so willingly share their photos for free for artists to use as reference. I will have the finished painting available in my store in a few weeks.