Rainbow in soft light – watercolour painting of swirly pastel rainbow trees by Kirsten Bailey
I love painting. Scanning my paintings and then uploading them to Etsy, Redbubble and my website, is not quite as fun. I have a bit of a backlog of paintings I need to scan and upload. I painted this one last year and I’m just getting around to posting it here. I love pastel colours although I don’t use them all that often. I like how this one turned out!
What are your thoughts. Do you prefer bright rainbows or pastel rainbows?
This painting is A4 size so it’s easy to frame without having to get a custom frame made. The original is available for purchase in my Etsy store. Prints and products like the ones featured below are available at Redbubble.
Autumn Tempus – Whimsical watercolour painting of swirly autumn trees in red and green
In case you can’t already tell, I love painting trees! I especially love painting trees in a whimsical, rather than true-to-life, way. Sometimes this manifests as swirling branches:
At other times, the leaves themselves seem to swirl:
My newer paintings feature a variety of patterns in the foliage of the trees:
I love painting in lots of different ways – it means I never get bored. Which style is your favourite?
You can purchase my original painting Autumn Tempus from my Etsy store. Prints and products like the ones featured below are available from Redbubble.
This week’s topic over at Illustration Friday is ‘love’. I haven’t participated in one of these prompts in a really long time – I think the last one was back in January 2011 (and ironically, that post is all about how my new year’s resolution was to participate in prompts more often. Whoops.) I decided to participate this week because the topic is one that really suits my painting style.
One of my favourite things to do is represent people as trees, showing the relationships between the people using colour, size, spacing and other elements.
“Night Romance”
In one of my most recent paintings, I used two trees to represent the love of a couple. I represented the theme of ‘love’ in a variety of ways. Firstly, the trees themselves are shaped like hearts. You will also notice many hearts in the swirls of the leaves if you look closely. I painted the trees very close together, overlapping. I also deliberately allowed the paint to run and mix at the point where the trees touched – I wanted to convey the way that in a close relationship, people become part of one another. I used the a mix of the red and blue in the colours of the sky to also show this connection.
Many people are looking for interesting art for their walls to represent their families. I myself have grand plans for a family feature wall in our next house.
I can create a work of art for you that represents your family in a unique way. In my family tree portraits, I represent the family using a number of my signature swirly trees.
“Little Family”
In the portrait, I represent each parent in a different primary colour. I then represent the children as a secondary colour that is a blend of the two parents’ colours, to represent that the children are a blending of the two parents. I also use hearts to represent the love the family shares. I can do any variation on this theme you like, including creating a portrait for blended families with stepchildren. It is a great way to have an artwork on your wall that uniquely represents your family. These paintings can be created as anything from small watercolours on paper to large acrylic paintings on canvas.
Another way your family can be uniquely represented on your wall is in a painting like this:
In this painting, only a couple are represented – however, smaller birds could be added to represent children. Once again, a painting like this can be commissioned as anything from a small watercolour to a large canvas. I have plans to create a painting like this for my own family – but I think I might make the background more like this one:
Under the Milky Way
If you’d like to commission a painting that represents your family in a unique way, please contact me!
How do you give a title to your artwork? This is something I often have difficulty with. I recently finished a painting I’m struggling to find a title for.
I feel like the title should help the viewer to understand the meaning and inspiration behind the work. But I want the title to be interesting and in some cases, a little mysterious – especially in my abstract work – I want the viewer to have the chance to make up their own mind.
Sometimes, a title comes to me immediately – often this is the case for the simple images – a group of colourful trees on a night sky background becomes ‘night colour’, or an image of a baby bird taking its first flight becomes ‘brave‘.
“Night Colour”
“Brave”
For other paintings, I have more trouble thinking of a title. Sometimes I’m inspired by quotes or poetry – My painting “Hope is the thing with feathers” is inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson.
“Hope is the thing with feathers”
The title of my painting ‘Beautiful Mysterious’, of a star filled galaxy, was inspired by a quote by Albert Einstein:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.”
“Beautiful Mysterious” – original watercolour purple galaxy painting by KL Bailey Art
Fellow artists: How do you come up with titles for your work? Is it something you struggle with, or does it come easily?
