Heliconia and Ginger

7" x 5"
Oil on canvas panel

You can view and purchase this painting here.

I painted this for DPW's Farmers' Market challenge. The photo provided is awfully nice, and maybe I'll have time to do that too. The scene I chose is from our vacation to French Polynesia several years ago. The city market in Papeete has gorgeous piles of vegetables and fruits, pareus hanging from above, and outside are flower sellers. The flowers in Tahiti are fabulous—the colors almost hurt your eyes.

The market has metal gates around the perimeter when it's closed (a lot of public buildings there don't have sides!). They're painted this fabulous shade of green.

Florals are not my specialty, so I tried hard to not paint each and every blossom as its own entity. They were really just masses of color.

Blocking in average color

highlights

starting the background