Butterfly Painting

This painting was made as a group activity over the summer. The school Art club scheduled everyone to bring their own canvas, and we where given colors and brushes to follow along. Up until then, I have only ever painted on small canvases on my own, never in a classroom setting. I wanted to big and chose a large canvas to showcase my painting skills (at the time). I started out with the background, starting in the middle with the lightest color and blending colors outward. I attempted wet on wet blending, trying to make a smooth transition and background. I wanted the background to look like a bright moon with the dark sky around it, still giving the moon a glow. I waited for it to dry and painted my next layer. I loaded my paintbrush with white paint, and then stood over it and banged my paint brush to make white droplets to represent stars. I wanted the placement to be random and sporadic so I experimented with this technique. For the next layer, I painted black tree branches black as it was in the night, and then bended white highlight to make it stand out from the dark background. When this layer dried, I painted bright pink flowers on the trees with white dots in the middle. I wanted it too look innocents, almost childlike flowers that are simple and cute. Last thing I painted was the butterflies in the middle under the moon. Both butterflies are painted the same pinks as the flowers adn well as the same white and black in the background to make a coheseive look. I made one butterfly larger and one smaller, almost like a mother and a child. Overall I liked this piece when I first made it. but after looking back at it and growing as an artist, I think I could have done better transitioning the background colors and picked a brown for the branches to stand out from the black background.