Painting More Cherry Blossoms

You may or may not know that I’m reproducing a lot of my paintings into wall decals. Not vinyl decals. Fabric/paper decals. That will look handpainted and will stick on nearly any surface. But before the paintings can be reproduced, the printing company need a really clear, high resolution photos.

Since I’m the one who usually takes the pics, not too many are very clear. Oh, they’re clear enough to look at on a computer, but not clear enough to reproduce.

So I’m painting up a storm. Every spare minute. Repainting some of my favorite wall murals. Like the cherry blossom tree mural in the baby girl’s nursery.

Since I’m just getting started with this whole painting-for-reproduction-into-decal thing, I figured I’d try to be smart and just paint a simple cherry blossom branch. Just a branch.

I said I’d “try” to be smart.

You realize that very word “try” implies you haven’t fully succeeded. Which is why the title of this post is “Painting More Cherry Blossoms” instead of “How To Paint Cherry Blossoms”.

It started out fine. Just paint the ‘skeleton’ of the branch in light brown.

Then thicken the branches a bit and add a few twigs here and there.

So far, so good. In fact, I thought I’d actually be writing a tutorial at this point so I took step-by-step pics.

For the cherry blossoms, three shades of pink. Dip one corner of the brush in the deep pink and the other corner in one of the lighter shades.

Just like I showed you for the Watermelon Floorcloth.

Make 5 or six petals for a full blossom and just one or two for a cherry blossom bud.

While the paint is still wet, add some more light pink to the outside of the petals.

Then do as many shapes as you can think of.

Over and over.

And over again.

Then add some stems and really simple leaves.

And that should’ve been that, save for adding the flower stamen.

I stopped painting, had dinner, came back into the room and saw . . .

This! All I could see was an upside-down ‘T’.

Once my eyes saw it, it drove me nuts. I had to leave it alone for a day while I tried to figure out whether to let it go as-is or try and salvage it somehow. Or just dump the whole thing and start over. Which is really what the larger part of me wanted to do.

But somewhere deep inside of me a tiny voice said ‘try’ and save it.

Yeah . . . ‘try’ again.

Ok. So I changed the shape of the upward branch and added a gnarl. Is that a word – gnarl? Well, anyway, I changed the shape of the branch.

Then added some shading to the branches and twigs.

And simply dotted some light pink stamen into the blossoms.

Did it work? Did I salvage this painting?

Sort of. I haven’t decided yet. Part of me wants to add a couple of butterflies. Or birds.

I can’t tell you if it’s the part of me that said to ditch the painting or the part that told me to salvage it.

So, right now, I’m just letting it sit here for a while.

If I was painting this as a commission, I’d definitely add butterflies. But since this will be a decal for people to position however they want, wherever they want, I’d rather leave it just a branch and let them decide if they want butterflies or birds. Or dragonflies.

Oh, one more thing. That beautiful silk fabric in the baby girl’s nursery that I matched the cherry blossoms to? I’ve been told (on good authority) that the fabric will be available in Babies R Us next year.

Just writing that about Babies R Us has made my mind up. I might keep this painting, but I’ll definitely paint another cherry blossom branch, or two, or three.

I mean, how cool would it be to offer decals that coordinate with a new line of bedding at a major retailer?
Not as cool as if the major retailer actually placed an order for decals from me, but ya gotta start somewhere, right?