My neighborhood walks often inspire my work, and this piece is a prime example. I captured a series of photos of Japanese magnolias in bloom in the spring, in different stages of development. This particular tree had an abundance of beautiful, open flowers in full blossom. I raised my camera overhead into the foliage to catch this perspective, focusing on one perfect flower.

I didn’t want to remove the tree from the street scene, as I preferred to keep the landscape present. The challenge for me was in being able to depict the entire scene with so many elements overlapping. My solution was to treat the landscape almost as an “underpainting” in the digital illustration, allowing me to be fairly vague in the fidelity of the drawing, layering the elements of the tree over top with increasing brightness and sharpness.

Painting this piece was equally challenging. Layering in an illustration app isn’t the same as doing it on canvas, which requires more meticulous planning regarding color  order and relationships. This painting represents one of my most complex color palettes, with around 24 colors applied in multiple coats. The composition radiates out from the central flower, becoming an energetic tangle of pinks, purples, greens and browns, reaching a harmonious balance of bold and subtle hues.