I don’t normally paint flowers but I always like to work outside my comfort zone and try and learn something new.

I wanted to paint all the needles in one go so I could match the colours. Because my paintings are very detailed and take a rather long time, I wanted to make sure I used the same order of colours.

Next I painted all the little seed pods, to me they look like little coconuts. These were tricky because they were so tiny and trying to create little shadows, splits and holes for each one.

Now the fun part or I should say difficult part, working with yellow and white seem to give me no end of trouble. These two colours have some kind of sticky gum that drys on the brush therefore making it hard to paint detail with.

Lots and lots of repeated layers of yellow and white make up the bottle brush.

I also have my eye on a red bottle brush that has just started to flower, I’m just waiting to see what insects it attracts first.

Now time to add three types of bees, I thought the blue one would stand out a little more since its the complementary opposite to yellow. I guess with the black bands it didn’t stand out as much as I hoped it would.

I always like to add a little closeup shot to give you an idea of the detail and scale of the artwork.

All framed up and ready for my exhibition in Miles 3rd September to 27 October 2022, Surrounded by nature. Click to see more artworks for the exhibition.