Birds & Blossoms

Welcome back to the blog, and welcome to my first painting collection release in a WHILE. I am pleased to announce that Brilliant Blossoms, the first 6 paintings in a 12 painting series, is officially out in the world!

I’m now trying to distill all my thoughts about this collection into something simple and clear, and man is that hard! Partly because there are two kids bouncing around my living room making all sorts of noise, but also because it means so many things to me.

Most importantly, this collection release is one that I am very proud of. I had this idea a while ago, but for once, I didn’t jump into creating it right away. I let it marinate. I let the details come to mind at their own pace, and it led me somewhere new.

Where did that inspiration originally come from, you might ask? Well, I will fess up to being a total nerd who reads Harry Potter fanfiction like it’s 2005. In those stories, I’ve noticed a common theme surrounding the language of flowers. In fact, it came up so often in the fics I’ve read over the past year or so that I made a list of the most important flowers in each story, plus a few others like “Pansy” that are more self-explanatory (at least if you know Harry Potter). And thus, an idea was born…

As far as actual technique goes, I ended up using a different medium than usual. My first idea for the series was a complete left turn: a set of soft pastel flowers. But I had to get real with myself – my pastel skills are not nearly as developed as my painting skills, which would’ve undoubtedly led to a lot of frustration. (I have not ruled out the possibility of returning to these florals when I’ve leveled up my pastel skills!) So instead, I chose acrylic gouache. It’s essentially an acrylic paint, but it’s a more liquidy texture out of the bottle and it dries fully matte like gouache does. It dries incredibly fast on the page, so that makes it a little challenging to use, but the colors are so punchy and bold and I love the final results so much.

This is also the first collection that I’m offering already fully framed. Each frame was handpicked at a secondhand store, and I had so much fun leaning into the glitzy, glamorous vintage vibes while I was shopping. Then I had even more fun laying all the frames out and pairing them with exactly the right painting. It was more of a process than I anticipated, but in a good way.

I can honestly say that I am fully happy with this art that is now out for you to browse, enjoy, and perhaps even invite into your own home. I am my own worst critic, so that is definitely not a given, but I feel like I achieved the goal I set for myself. I think it shows in my work, too – I hope you’ll agree!

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me at hannah@birdsblossoms.com at any time for a chat. And make sure to subscribe to the newsletter so you get notified about future releases, in-person shows, and freebies!