Painting Proteas on a Runner Part 1

I have been asked to paint a table runner with Proteas, to match a set of place-mats and coasters. Since the client was thousands of kilometres away, I only had photographs to work from. The challenge was on! Let me show you how I met it.

The first thing is to cut the fabric to the required size. In this case the specifications were 210 cm x 45 cm.

I decided to use the same freehand drawing which would repeat four times over the length of the runner, simply adjusting the position of the flower each time. I therefore start by folding the fabric in four to mark the proper space for each flower.

This is the space each flower would have to fill.

I draw a very feint pencil circle to mark the outline of the flower.

I add the stem and start adding the leaves which are the shapes in the foreground. The other shapes are all slightly overlapping each other.

I use a artist quality HB pencil to draw on the Sheeting fabric which has a high cotton content. Incorrect lines can easily be erased, even on fabric, provided you use a soft eraser.

It takes a while to develop the flower, but I want a proper drawing to start from. Basic outlines will not suffice for this project.

Once the first flower is in place, I draw 3 more so that there is a total of 4 flowers on the runner.

Close-up A.

Close-up B.

I use Acrilpen to block the colors in and to start the coloring and shading process. The leaves are outlined with Green.

The stems of the flowers are outlined with brown.

The petals of the Protea are outlined with Orange.

The inside of the Protea is developed with different colors. Essential shadows are added. These are essential since they assist in shaping the cone of the flower.

Once the color blocking is done, we are ready to start the painting process.

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