Georgia's Tulips

Georgia did several variations of these tulips in a glass vase. The first from an online tutorial and the others from the photo used in the tutorial. I apologize but I haven't necessarily presented these in sequence. They all work well and each have their strengths that I appreciate above the others. These paintings all have nice energy and a good combination of fidelity to the photo reference and Georgia's own interpretations.

  This may be my favorite because of the vigorous brush strokes and the deeper color in the dark sides of the leaves.

   I like the warmer table top and it's relationship to the greens and reds of the tulips. This like the piece above it has a nice, rich background which sets off the tulips well.

   Here is the photo Georgia used as reference. I like the color and the lighting. However, I'm torn about the basic composition of the set up of the flowers with the large negative space between the two groups of flowers. Below I've added another flower to that space. More fundamentally, I've changed the orientation of canvas. One thing that I've felt about Georgia's studies is that the compositions have felt a little squeezed by the shortening of the length of the stems. I've just flipped the orientation here and opened up the composition though there may be too much negative space on the edges. The version on the bottom is for a square canvas. It allows for the extended stems but crops the excessive negative space at the edges.

This highlights a common issue. Before we commit to a painting we should all consider one of the most basic compositional issues—the ratio of the image we want to paint, to the ratio of the canvas and it's orientation we choose to paint it on. In these photoshopped images, the shadow side of the leaves have been darkened a bit and there is a little more transparancy through the glass vase. The pinker flowers work well. I did the flower on the table top redder as in the photo just to consider.

   More great work Georgia.