The Feather Featured Art series is chosen by art teacher Vickey Belmont from her classes and/or independent art students. Belmont picks the best work during current units and encourages students to participate in these occasional posts. Other students are encouraged to submit art pieces as well. Please contact the editors directly or via adviser Kori James for submissions.

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Description by art teacher Vickey Belmont:

Summer Foshee is an Art 3 student, she works independently, creating art of her choice. She has created many pieces of art this year in my class, the biggest piece she has created is a watercolor painting of flowers. The painting is oversized and her attention to detail allows the viewer to fully appreciate the beauty of each flower.

She is a very talented artist and her ability to capture the colors and textures of the flowers is incredible. The softest color variation in the hydrangea petals and the floral disc, the center of the daisy, have so much detail that you might just want to smell them. This picture is the perfect painting to start the spring semester.

Junior Summer Foshee:

When deciding what project to start next, I looked through the paper closet. I saw a 22×30” sized water color paper. The large size inspired me to draw something up close and add as much detail as I could. After researching flowers , I picked a hydrangea and two types of daisies.

Before I could put a brush to paper, I had to sketch a lot. Beginning with a normal printer paper, I planed where each flower would be placed. Next, I transferred the design onto the large watercolor paper by lightly sketching with a pencil. However, I didn’t want to start painting yet because the pencil would have shown through. I traced over the flowers with color pencils, which blend into the watercolors better.

Once the sketches were done, I painted in the leafy background. I let the green and yellow blend into each other and create bubbles of color. Once that dried, I used lighter colors to map out the different petals of the flower. Finally, I added shading and more color to each flower. This took many weeks, especially because I used a gradient for each petal of the hydrangea. My favorite part was adding each bump in the center of the two right flowers.

For more Feature Art, visit Feature Art No. 3 – monochromatic portraits.

To read more from The Feather, visit Mother’s Day Gift Ideas.