Bloom Series, Balloon Flower

Bloom Series Balloon Flower.

Bloom Series Balloon Flower is one of six bloom paintings in the collection, each selected from the garden. Balloon Flower, the common name for Platycodon grandiflorus, is distinguished by its unique balloon-like flower buds. These inflated buds resemble miniature hot air balloons, evoking a sense of anticipation before they burst open into exquisite, star-shaped flowers. The Balloon flower presents a vibrant display of color. While the most prevalent hue is blue-violet, cultivars with white, pink, and purple blooms also exist. The flowers typically possess five pointed lobes, enhancing their star-like appearance. Included in the Bloom Series, this painting transports the garden’s beauty indoors, allowing for year-round enjoyment.

MEDIUM: Digital Painting | STYLE: Painterly Realism | SIZE: 8 x 10 | ORIENTATION: Landscape | TOOLS: Procreate, 13″ iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro, Giclée Fine Art Archival paper and ink | AVAILABILITY: Prints available | CONTACT SHADOWMYST ART FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

ARTIST’S PROCESS:

Bloom Series: Balloon Flower was painted in Procreate on a 13” iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil Pro. The Balloon Flower, like each painting in this set of 6 paintings, replicates the depth and texture of traditional paintings through layered digital brushwork. A meticulous structural drawing was created, detailing the shape, leaves, stems, and patterns for this particular piece. The background color is a neutral light grey with a watercolor texture pattern and a gentle sweep of small, irregular dots in a mix of medium grey and cream color, spread across the canvas behind the blooms to add movement to the piece. This background is uniform across all six pieces in the series, unifying the series.

The subsequent step involved color blocking for each petal and leaf group on distinct layers to establish depth through variations in size, intensifying colors, and creating distinct light and shadow effects. Above the base color of the leaf, multiple rounds of intricate detail work and value refinement were applied to render the leaf details for each layer. Given that this flower exhibits two distinct appearances, this piece incorporates both forms: the pre-bloom “balloon” stage and the fully expanded star-shaped flower.

CHALLENGE:

The mature version of the Balloon Flower presents a complex system of delicate yet highly visible vein structure in its petals, which constituted the primary challenge for this artwork. The flesh of the Balloon Flower petals is thin and delicate, exhibiting a subtle transparency that accentuates the veins of the petal. Achieving a clear vein structure while preserving the thin appearance of the petal necessitated meticulous detailing and the manipulation of petal color washes between the veins.

Initially, a layer for the vein map was created above the petal’s color-blocked base layer. Utilizing the Procreate fine tip inking brush at 100% opacity and 2% size, the veins were painted in light strokes across the layer for each petal. Subsequently, a layer set below the vein map layer was employed to construct the petal’s flesh using the Procreate small watercolor round brush at 50% opacity and 5% size. This pass involved applying small sections of watercolor wash in a medium purple-blue color, following the sections between the veins, to establish a subtle shading pattern at the edges of the larger sections between the veins.

A second layer, positioned just above the previous layer, employed the same technique with white added to the color, resulting in an almost invisible blend between the veins. As the process progressed towards the end of the petals, the white was increased to appear pale blue. This technique successfully created a subtle puffiness between the veins, which progressively diminished towards the tip of the petal, where the flesh is flat.

The final result was a distinctly visible vein structure within a semi-transparent skin, ensuring that the veins did not appear disconnected from the flower’s delicate petal surface.

SUBJECTS AND THEMES:
Botanical — Balloon Flower — Flowers — Garden — Nature — Bloom Series — CONTACT SHADOWMYST ART FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION