Floriography

I know, I know, I'm terrible about updating. I think I need to set an alarm to remind me to post about what I'm working on.
I've been practicing bead embroidery, and learning how to use a beading loom. I'm taking a small break from resin, and feeling the itch to work with polymer clay again. Right now, however, I'm exercising the painter in me. I'm working on a series of sympathy cards featuring flowers typically used in funeral arrangements with their associated Victorian floriography meanings.

Starting with flower picture references, I drew pencil sketches on tracing paper and transferred them to watercolor paper. The tracing paper sketches will also make them easier to transfer them to fabric for embroidery, if I decide to go that route. Next, I painted the flowers in watercolors. One personal quirk with my painting is that I typically use only one or two small brushes for an entire painting. After all the flowers were painted and dry, I scanned them into the computer with as high a resolution as the scanner would let me, since I intend to have them printed.

This is the scanned in, very rough painted yarrow flower. The yarrow was the last one I drew, and I really didn't want to draw the individual little buds in the yellow part. It's placement in the bottom corner of the page rather than centered is so I can add in text. My handwriting is not the neatest or prettiest, so I prefer typed text. I am using a font called Bilbo, found on FontSquirrel.com. Font Squirrel is my favorite source for fun fonts that are available for commercial use. (this is not an ad for Font Squirrel, I just really like them and think it's a good resource for anyone else looking for awesome fonts)

In floriography, yarrow means undying love. While it's not typically used in flower arrangements, that I've seen anyway, it is still a pretty and meaningful little herb.

I use GIMP 2 for image manipulation and digital painting. It's a very nice free alternative to Photoshop. (also not an ad) I cleaned up the background, added a bit of color and outlining, and inserted the text.

I even found a nifty brush that gave me little circles so I didn't have to hand draw the individual flower buds.

Currently, I have 12 flowers painted, and ready to be worked on in GIMP, including the yarrow.

I am working on a carnation next, then a mum, a rose, orchids, azaleas, gladioli, irises, stargazer lilies, juniper, rosemary and tarragon.