Fragrant Plumeria

Last spring, I was fortunate to see the work of Joseph Raffael in person.  There was an exhibit at Soka University and it was truly amazing.  His work is beautiful on his website but can't be appreciated fully until you see it in person.  His paintings are HUGE and very intricate.  I could have stayed at the show for days and not tired of looking and finding new things.

I decided to try to paint like him.   I started this right after seeing the show but it then I ignored it until last week.  Most of his paintings have these incredible borders that look like confetti.  The way he paints them (I think) is to put the confetti colors on first and then paint around them.  He had blooms in the background color of the border that I didn't want so I did my background color first, leaving white areas that I could fill in with color and then I used plastic wrap to get more texture.

My intention for the flowers and background was to NOT care about blooms and be very loose and messy.  Well, I started out that way but it was really stressful for me so other than one bloom in the background (which drove me crazy) and the type of border I did, this is nothing like Joseph's work.  I had good intentions.  Maybe if I'd had a glass of wine first it would have turned out differently.  Also, I think the flowers I picked really didn't lend themselves to the broken, textural color that he does so well.

The border on this was fun.  I've always used borders in my silk paintings but rarely in my watercolors although I'm not sure why that is.  I'll probably use borders in the future but I doubt if I'll do the confetti look again.  That just seems to be too much of a signature of Joseph's.

To check out Joseph Raffael's beautiful paintings, click on his name.  He also has videos on his site that are fun to watch.

Inspired by Joseph Raffael
Image size 22" x 30"
Watercolor