“Peonies”, 9×12″ pastel on paper by Annie Dash Studios
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable— if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. – Philippians 4:8
The exquisite, delicate peony symbolizes love, beauty, prosperity, honor, and happiness. While they are in bloom for a relatively short period of time, seeing them brings immense joy to my artist’s heart.
I was captivated by these incredibly beautiful peonies growing outside of the fine arts building at Indiana University Southeast, where my son takes clarinet lessons. This was one of the photos that I took. I was taken with the cascade of blossoms moving through the picture plane:
“Peonies” photograph by Annie Dash
Continuing my floral portrait series that began with “Magnolia”, and “Rose” in watercolor and moved to pastel painting with “Iris”, and “Hydrangea”, I am delighted to add “Peonies” to this collection.
As with the other artworks in the series, I used PanPastels to produce a painterly look for the underpainting of the flower blossoms and leafy background, then added Faber Castell Pitt pastel pencils for all the detail work. I wanted to highlight the delicateness of the blooms and achieve an overall soft look and painted in many layers to achieve this. Here is a video overview of the completed piece.
Peonies are quite complex and challenging to paint but I absolutely loved working in the pastel medium to create this piece!
In case you missed it — I always work from extremely high quality reference photos with professional prints, and recommend this for other artists as well. In fact, I was inspired to study photography in college and beyond from my desire to get high quality reference photos (you can learn more about that in the About page).
This piece is also available as a fine art giclee print in the Online Shop.
I’m wishing you and your loved ones a day filled with love, beauty, prosperity, honor, and happiness!