Orchid Wall Mural

Well, its finished! I am finally posting some pics of the orchid I painted for Jessie's salon called Twisted Orchid Studio. Here's a close up in-progress shot that I Instagrammed on my art account. The filters in Instagram help bring out the colour and contrast that my phone camera diminishes.

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Layer one done, minus the stem!

    When applied with a small paint brush, the latex paint can be very thin and require many coats to cover an area. It also gets tacky fast, and therefore is hard to blend well to create gradual tonal changes. Next time I think I will lay down a midtone layer or two over all the petals before going in with the shadows and highlights. I tried to do it all at once, but the surface was too large, even for each individual petal sometimes, and it required two coats of paint for each section. 

      Here's the whole thing. Hopefully you can see the scale by comparing with the chair, stool, and outlets in the wall. It's taller than I am! I learned a lot about how to put the colour down because I was using interior latex paint rather than acrylic, which I am more used to working with. 
   We decided not to add leaves at the bottom because some shelving was going there anyways. In the end I added a fresh light green to the tips of the petals to brighten and saturate the image. It was lots of fun!