Winter Whites - new watercolor painting of orchids

I'm not what you'd call a green thumb. Maybe that's why I love to paint flowers so much, because I'm not much of a gardener! But I am good at growing orchids. I bought my first orchid plant after reading a blog post about how easy orchids are to grow, written by a woman in Alaska. I figured if someone that far north could grow orchids, so could I! Since then, my Phalenopsis has grown lovelier and larger every year, and right now there are seventeen blooms on the stem! It's almost embarrassing. This is the first time I've painted my own orchids - my other orchid painting was of orchids I'd photographed in Papua New Guinea back in 2006. (there's also a cute interchange between me and my husband in that post!)

It is always a challenge to know how to approach a painting - I tend toward being almost stiffly realistic and so about halfway through the painting, I realized that I didn't like how things were going. I flipped the paper and started over and am so glad I did! I was able to keep a sense of transparency and lightness that was missing in the first effort. Just goes to show the truth of my "second attempt" method!

I'm delighted by the finished painting - I painted it and gave it on behalf of our church to a dear family who is moving away. Their family members are some of our family's best friends so it meant a lot to be able to create something that they will love and treasure as a memory of their church family in northern BC. Now I'm looking forward to going to visit them "down south" in their new home - for more reasons than one!