Flower Art Paintings: 5 Ways to Make a Familiar Subject Feel Brand New

 The Flower is the first muse of art.

They bloom. They fade. They return. That attraction is felt by every artist who has ever dipped a brush.

For this reason, flower art paintings are so challenging to master. All of us have encountered a rose. We've all seen a Sunflower. Your viewer already has a point of view before he/she even sets eyes on your canvas.

Then how do you take a stuffy or familiar topic and make it fresh?

Here are five ways.

1. You can choose a Neglected Flora

When you see flower art contests all around the world, you will notice that most flower artworks have the same kind of flowers, so a way to make your flower art painting unique is to choose a flower that no one has yet. There are so many flora species in the world to make a choice from. 

Select the neglected flower or the neglected angle; something new is something unique; it's the perception. 

Try a thistle. A dandelion with seed heads. A weed emerging through concrete.

When off-beat topics capture the viewer's interest, spectators stop what they are doing. Why that flower? And this is where it all starts with connection.

Seek out beauty in an environment that people pass. Cracked pavements. Empty lots. Roadside ditches. 

2. Change the Scale

Flower art competitions are the perfect way to analyze what other artists are missing. You can analyse the data to set your scale. Go huge. Or go tiny.

Georgia O'Keeffe made flowers gigantic so that just one flower covered the entire canvas. You couldn’t look away. It was no longer a flower, but a landscape of folds, shadows, and light.

Try it yourself. Fill one petal in the frame. Or, reduce the size of an entire meadow to palm size.

The scale affects the way we perceive. Suddenly a familiar bloom seems strange, powerful, and even abstract.

3. Discuss the cover and the story with a partner

Read the cover and the story of your flower art painting to someone you know who would give you an honest opinion. 

Ask what they see, or how they see particular flowers, which ones they like and why.

You can ask yourself too. 

It is good to have fresh flowers. The wilting ones are dramatic.

Browning edges. Drooping heads. Petals on a table.

Beauty lies in the decay! Speaks the truth about time. Honest art is harder to come by than polished perfection.

Now add a story. A bouquet of flowers on a hospital table. Empty house windowsill with flowers. One remaining stalk on a park bench.

All at once it's not botany. It’s narrative.

Provide your viewer with questions. Who left it? Who was it for? What happened here? The most successful flower art paintings do not tell all.

4. Animate the Object

Blue sunflowers. Black tulips. Neon orchids.

There was no law that the palette of nature was a law. Your imagination is what makes you creative and an artist.

If there is any doubt about accuracy, colors go a long way towards communicating mood. So, color in the idea of the flower. 

Joy can have a yellow color. Mourning could be a dark violet. Nostalgia is a dusty, old-fashioned pink.

Do a quick experiment. Sketch and color in another flower. When put in true colours. After being colored to represent an emotion. Place them in parallel. You will be able to recognize it right away.

5. Violate the rules of the game.

Flowers are not just for watercolor! Flower art paintings can be made in different media as well. 

Think wider:

Petals being weighty and rich in oil.

Acrylic layers produce graphic colour.

One confident stroke of the pen for ink captures a stem.

The photography captures a bloom at its best.

Colour options that pigment can't beat with a stick.

Not all of the most eye-catching floral arrangements today are paintings. It’s carved. Cut. Stitched. Printed.

Then ask yourself, what would your flower look like in another medium you have never used?

To give your flowers a deadline.

The truth about creativity. We get comfortable.

We do what works again. We paint what sells, and we sell what we paint. We hold tight to what we know!

A theme and deadline break habit. Boundaries are our opportunity to be creative.

This is the inspiration of a good flower art contest. One theme. Thousands of interpretations. One artist sends a paper-thin piece. Another sends a thick oil painting. A sculpture is submitted by someone else. All are “flower.” None look alike.

The flower art competition by TERAVARNA works like this. It is open to painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, mixed media, and digital. It is more about the heart, more about the mind, more about what lies behind the technique in each piece. Also, it's requesting only human-made art, the only thing that belongs to a flower!

However, even if you don't place, you leave with the finished product, a better eye, and a better record of you being there. That's more valuable than a lot of people realize.

Start With One Flower

No studio is required. It is not necessary to have a masterpiece.

You need a flower.

It could be right on your desk. Perhaps it's on your windowsill. Perhaps it's a throwback to your grandmother's garden.

Sketch it. Study it. Then give one of these 5 ideas a try and see what happens.

There's no need for another perfect rose in the world. It requires your version of one.