As you know, I’ve been taking a lettering course from Becca @The Happy Ever Crafter. Now that I feel comfortable with forming letters I thought it was time to try a cohesive piece. Obviously there’d be lettering. But what else to put with it? I’d been thinking about flowers for the past month or so. I plan on filling my next Zig Zag book with flowing bouquets of flowers so I thought maybe I’d start there, lettering a saying and florals as a background.
First, I was thinking of this quote by Heinlein (one of my all time favorite authors).
“Love is that condition in which
the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
But then I thought that might be just too complicated for my first piece. Besides, I didn’t want to do the text in just plain black, I wanted to try an ombré effect so shorter is better.
After I lettered the piece I put a box around it and started filling in the background with stylized florals. Get ye to Google. What I did was look up flowers that I liked, took a look at several photos of single flowers, closed the computer and drew from memory. I knew if I kept the computer open I’d get too deep into perfection, trying to capture the actual flower. I wanted the viewer to get a sense of the flower not the minutiae of every petal.
After I finished I decided I wanted the background to be black. Here’s the finished piece. I’m thrilled. This is the very first piece of art that really was ALL ME. I looked at no one’s lettering, I just sat down and lettered it. Same with the florals. I knew what daisies looked like and how peony petals tended to curve and undulate. So I drew what I saw in my mind’s eye.
Lynette
Beautiful. Keep up the nice work. Love the variations too.
Tracy
That’s gorgeous Jenn! I would probably be fighting with myself about whether to blush some color onto the flowers or not. I love the contrasty look you achieve by leaving the flowers B&W with the colored lettering. 🙂
Tracy
PS – I had to look up the Heinlein quote because I love all his books. As suspected, it’s from Stranger in a Strange Land – my hands down favorite of everything he wrote (not to mention it sounds like something that Valentine Michael Smith would say). I’ve always thought that book would make for an amazing – but definitely challenging – big screen movie.
Kristi
Woo hoo!!! All your hard work is paying off – big time!!! This is gorgeous 😀
@jammin_zen
Sandra Gilbert
Beautiful piece!
alice
this is absolutely beautiful, Jennifer! I love all the flowers! and your lettering just may inspire me to give it a try one day. love you, lady!
Jean matmo
Simply gorgeous. You are rocking this!
Susan C
Your lettering and flowers are fabulous! Well done!
Jennifer Rose
Heinlein has some really good books, need to read more when i have time
the black makes a really good contrast with the colouring in the letters 🙂
sandra strait
It’s amazing what we can see with our inner eye when we quit relying on the outer ones. You did an utterly amazing job with this, Jenn!
Linda Kunsman
wow- this is stunning!!! You are so very talented my friend!