Flower Shop, palette knife painting by Ann Gorbett

Flower Shop

by Ann Gorbett

Oil with a palette knife on artist board

10" x 8"

I was having one of those nights during Thursday night painting class where I felt the need to organize my painting supplies before I could get into the right mindset to paint anything worthwhile. So after scraping clean the palette, squeezing down all of the tubes of paint using my fabulous paint tube wringer, then setting out a fresh, new array of pretty dollups of paint, I finally settled down to paint. Thoughts of the anal retentive chef from SNL come to mind? Yes-sometimes I am the anal retentive artist.

So with the shortened time I had left, I started this painting from a photo reference that Kim had on hand. I hadn't painted flowers in awhile and it's nice to change things up every now and then isn't it? The blue flowers and vase were not in the original image, but the composition needed some color down there. It's always difficult for me to "make stuff up" but I think this came out pretty believable. If you look closely, I actually painted the green color and then scraped it away to make it look like a glazed pottery. Kim has been encouraging me to try some new techniques with the palette knife such as this type of subtraction. I think it's a good idea too and can keep the paintings interesting and fresh.