Painting Two Lambs Standing in a Carpet of Flowers

A Calming Technique

Suzanne Allard’s video classes got me started with simple florals and I’ve done a handful of pieces with them. But with two, including this latest one, I’ve become aware of the calming effect painting them has on me. In fact, I decided to work this piece in this way because at the time, I needed calming! Painting two lambs standing in a carpet of flowers did the job!

I thought I’d take you through my process in case you might be interested in trying it too. In a way, you could think of it as flower doodling!

the lambs with the first flowers in the meadow

Here we are with the first layer of flowers, but obviously there were a few steps which came before.

Preparing the Background

Knowing that I tend to lose interest in a piece if it doesn’t have an animal in it somewhere, my very first step was to draw the two lambs. I decided to use an 11” x 14” piece of paper (Strathmore mixed media) because I wanted to see if I could scan it in two parts on my scanner with a 9” x 12” bed and then stitch the two parts together with PhotoShop Elements. More about that later.

Then I painted the background of blended blues, greens, and lavender. Working with acrylics, I chose medium values, hoping that both lights and darks would show up against them. My intention was to have mostly white and nearly-white flowers for an overall white/blue color scheme.

First Flowers in the Carpet of Flowers

Daisies and a Lily

For this piece, I didn’t use flower references or draw them in first. I just started painting, relying on my memory of favorite flowers. The first ones were the daisies just above the lambs’ heads. Daisies are pretty straightforward to paint, and it’s often good to start with something easy as an ice-breaker.

daisies and a lily

Here’s a detail showing those flowers. This detail (as are all the others in this post) is from the finished piece, but all I painted in the beginning were the flowers themselves—no leaves, stems, centers, or stamens yet, and the dark purple also came later.

I didn’t pay attention to the number of petals in the daisies, but kept in mind that they lay close to each other. As for the lily, I knew that they have six petals, three inner and three outer. The inner petals often have more color and markings than the outer ones. Here, I gave the inner petals wavy edges and the outer petals smooth ones, in the interest of keeping things visually interesting.

At this beginning stage, I was just aiming for a nice composition of the main, relatively larger flowers and a balance of colors across the piece.

Here are a few more detail views.

Hydrangea Clusters

a simplified hydrangea

Hydrangeas have clusters of individual flowers with four petals each and a distinct center. Sometimes the petals have wavy edges, but I kept mine simple and I also didn’t have them as tightly packed as they really are. This is because I didn’t want too big of a white space. Sort of big was good as it balanced the lambs, but I thought that any bigger might detract from them instead.

Lily-of-the-Valley and Queen Anne’s Lace

Queen Anne's lace and lily-of-the-valley

Lily-of -the-Valley are one of my very favorite flowers. I haven’t seen one in real life for a long time, but I often draw and paint them so they’re familiar to me. The individual flowers are like little white bells and the ones at the base of the stem are larger and more open than the ones at the top. I think it’s these kinds of details that help them be recognizable even though they’re not carefully rendered florals.

As for the Queen Anne’s lace, they’re grown wild everywhere I’ve lived and I’ve also grown them in my garden. They’re such a beautiful addition to bouquets with their airy look and feel.

As I painted these larger flowers, I began, as I said, with the daisies and lily in the upper right. Then I proceeded to the large hydrangea cluster on the other side, then the lily of the valley, and from there worked here and there to get a relatively even but wide spacing between my major flowers as they covered the page. After I had the flowers, I added some of their stems and leaves. At that point, I was finished with the first layer.

The Lambs

two little lambs in a flower-carpeted meadow

My next phase was to paint the lambs. Being all white, there wasn’t that much painting to do, but I wanted to have them completed before I continued with the flowers. This was because I wanted to be sure that, all along the way as I added more and more flowers, the lambs always remained the focal point.

As I worked to finish the painting, my aim was to add as much to the background as I could without overwhelming the lambs. I wanted every part of the painting to be interesting.

Finishing Painting Two Lambs Standing in a Carpet of Flowers

The lambs on a carpet of flowers

By the way, this image is a scan rather than a photo. They always look better, I think because of the light. And also, you can now see how vivid—rather unnaturally so—the greens are. This bothered me, but I started the piece determined to work with different greens and try to make them work.

As I filled in the background with more and more flowers, some, for example the lily-of-the-valley, were simply smaller versions of ones I’d painted in the first phase. But mostly, these second layer flowers were imaginary and, in some cases, looked a little more like mandalas than flowers! And I added leaves.

My goal was pretty even visual coverage as well as a variety of large and small and a balance of color.

Finally, I got out my liner brush and added some white spirals—one of my favorite motifs.

Except for the lambs, this whole piece was an exercise in surface design. I very much enjoyed it and found it surprisingly relaxing! I’d love to hear from you if you decide to give it a try.

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