{"id":7142,"date":"2026-08-04T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/?p=7142"},"modified":"2026-08-06T17:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T17:48:28","slug":"this-to-that-zhuzhing-the-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/this-to-that-zhuzhing-the-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"This to That: Zhuzhing the Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Acrylic<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Y’all, I hit a garage sale mother lode last weekend with this painting. First, it’s a hefty 20×16 canvas and it’s signed. I loved it in all its hesitant, fugly purples and pinks and knew I had to take it home with me. My husband sighed and loaded it in the car, so that’s how you know it’s really good.<\/p>\n

S. Banks, whoever you are, I want you to know I have mad respect for anyone who’s willing to fill up this much canvas with floral musings. It’s not easy to face that much real estate with nothing more than a number 8 filbert brush and a starter pack of acrylics. But, I knew that it could be so much more when I saw it.<\/p>\n

First of all, the light source. I see there’s a shadow on the table, but none of the plants are involved in casting shadows. Also, there’s a lot of disconnects between the flower petals, stems and background. It feels sparse. And that pot? With that many flowers, reaching that high, you’re going to put them in a squat little pot? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

I took some liberties.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

As you can see, I did a few things: shortened the table, reshaped the bouquet, and added a few elements: the window on the right and the chair are new. Also, that sad, 1994 mauve background had to go — too many midtones, not enough darks! At that same neighborhood garage sale, I got some open Grumbacher paints (hello, dioxazine purple!) and decided to go all-in on the “reuse, reduce, recycle” vibe of this effort.<\/p>\n

At this point, I was toying with the idea of making the pot translucent so we could see the stems, but nixed that in favor of terra cotta.<\/p>\n

I then jumped back and forth between the elements, working on a mix of flowers, background, chair, window, table. I really hate painting flowers, or maybe I hate painting light flowers on dark backgrounds with old paint? Yeah, that’s probably the source of my frustration. Anyway, it took a long, fiddly time to fill out that flower pot. I enjoyed painting in the chair, and making this look like a homely kitchen scene (with purple walls!).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Process<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\"The<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>

The shadows and other details went on last. Basically, I worked from big brush to little brush, dark to light to do this redux.<\/p>\n

After I hung it in the bathroom gallery and got the usual, surprised reaction from my husband, I realized that you wouldn’t put cut flowers in a terra cotta pot. Grrr. Argh. I’m probably the only one who will ever care about that, and I’m reluctant to paint over the pot I have because I really like how it turned out. Plus, I think the terra cotta effect looks good against purple walls. Those of you who are doing a purple kitchen remodel can do what you will with that information.<\/p>\n

I got a few more free canvases in the hopper. On to the next.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[189,196,197,187],"class_list":["post-7142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-art","tag-floral","tag-redux","tag-this-to-that"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7142"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7169,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142\/revisions\/7169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}