The daisy

The daisy has been seen to represent cleanliness, youth, purity and fertility.

It has been used in the christian world as a symbol of Virgin Mary to signify her chastity, grace and purity. and still represents such things today.

Because of the symbolism attached to this flower i decided i wanted to do a large scale painting including it, but i first wanted to decide on the composition and style in which to do so.

I wanted to adopt Wayne Thiebaud's stratagy of painting which is to use a lot of paint to see how to create my daisy.

Wayne Thiebaud

I used my hands to paint instead of brushes, because it brings a certain energy to a painting which i can't get when using a brush. On half on the painting i blended the paint, and on the other half i 'dotted' the paint more to see the different view both would give. i prefer the dotted side because the contrast draws you to the image and gives it texture.

Alex Katz

After looking at Thiebaud i looked at Alex Katz and his simplistic way of painting. i immediately liked it and wanted it to influence my painting.

I did a quick pencil colour sketch with his influence which i quite liked. it almost stops looking like a daisy because of the harshness of the lines on the tips of the petals.

Both the painting and the drawing has helped in designing a composition for my large scale painting but i still need to decide whether I'm going to change the design of the daisy.