Breaking My Own Rules: Painting a Prismatic Foxglove Mini

Why I Did Everything Differently This Time

I'm someone who talks a lot about signature style. And yes, having a consistent style helps when you're building a brand or selling work. But sometimes you just want to play. You want to pick up colors you never use, try a technique that feels foreign, and see what happens.

That's exactly what this painting became. Number five of six in my gallery submission series, and the one that broke every rule I normally follow. I sketched first. I used a full primary palette. I mixed colors on my palette instead of on the paper. And I had an absolute blast doing it.

Mini paintings are the perfect excuse to experiment. The paper is less expensive, the time investment is smaller, and there's less pressure. If it doesn't work out, you haven't lost much. But sometimes — like this time — it works out better than you expected.

The Subject: Foxgloves and a Bee Butt

The inspiration came from my own driveway. Last year, a foxglove grew there, and I photographed it. I love using reference images I've taken myself — there's something personal about it that makes the painting feel more connected.

And then there was the bee. In my reference image, a little bee is tucked inside one of the foxglove bells with its fuzzy bottom sticking out. I was absolutely delighted. That bee was going in the painting, no question.

Starting With a Sketch — Yes, Really

I never sketch before I paint. It's practically a cornerstone of how I work. But this time, I pulled out my fountain pen filled with a shimmery copper ink and loosely doodled the foxgloves directly onto my four-by-six hot press block.

The copper ink was a deliberate choice. Unlike graphite, it won't smudge and muddy your watercolors. And because it's a light orange tone, it doesn't dominate — if I don't want the line art to show, a layer of paint covers it easily. But if it does peek through, it adds a warm, organic quality rather than a harsh outline.

To transfer the composition, I actually used my phone to superimpose my reference image onto the paper and filmed the whole session with my iPad instead — a completely different setup than usual. Like I said: everything was different this time.

A Prismatic Palette Instead of My Usual Restraint

My normal approach is a very limited palette, with any color mixing happening directly on the paper. For this painting, I went the opposite direction — bright, almost prismatic primaries, and actual palette mixing.

My colors were cadmium yellow, rose madder permanent, manganese blue hue, and quinacridone magenta. For the bee, I brought in a touch of Payne's gray, which I genuinely cannot remember the last time I used.

Because I was working from a sketch rather than building the painting freely, I painted essentially one foxglove bell at a time, which is also completely unlike my usual process of putting everything down at once and layering details after drying.

Using Temperature Instead of Value for the First Wash

In a monochromatic painting, value does all the work — more water for lights, more paint for darks. With a full primary palette, I had a different tool available: color temperature.

In the first wash, most of my values were roughly the same midtone. So I used warm colors — yellow — to suggest where sunlight was hitting the foxgloves, and cooler shades to indicate shadow. It's a different way of thinking about form and depth, and it stretched my brain in a good way.

For the iconic spotted dots inside the foxglove bells, I used quinacridone magenta. And whenever things felt too tidy or paint-by-numbers, I would deliberately bleed a bit of color outside the line art to keep it loose and alive.

Mixing Colors on the Palette — A Rarity for Me

Since I was doing everything differently, I went ahead and mixed colors on my palette too. To get a green for the stem, I mixed blue and yellow — but the result was too bright and saturated. To tone it down and make it more earthy, I added a touch of its complement: red, or in this case, the rose madder or magenta, since I didn't have a true red.

This is a useful principle worth remembering: to tone down any color, add a bit of its opposite on the color wheel. And when you're working with a primary palette, you always have access to every color's complement because you can mix anything from primaries.

For the bee, I mixed Payne's gray with some of the manganese blue hue to keep it from looking flat and disconnected from the rest of the painting. The rule I try to follow: when introducing a new color, tie it back to something already in the painting. In this case, blue was already there, so the bee felt like it belonged.

The Bee, the Gouache, and a Near-Disaster With the Scrubber

Once everything was dry, I came back in with a size two synthetic round brush to build up shadows, push bells behind each other, and add depth to what had been a fairly even first wash.

For the white dots inside the foxglove bells — a signature detail of the flower — I reached for white gouache straight from the tube. Foxgloves have white markings around those spots, and I wanted to see if the gouache would make them more convincing. On darker surfaces it absolutely would have popped more, but even on my lighter bells, the differentiation was enough to be worth it.

I also tried using a scrubber brush to reclaim some of the paper's white — my preferred method before resorting to gouache. The hot press paper had other ideas. It almost immediately started to tear and pill. So I pressed a paper towel gently to absorb the moisture, put the scrubber away, and went back to the gouache. No panic, no catastrophizing — just adapting. More than likely, no one will ever know.

Going Dark in a Rainbow Painting

The hardest part of a light, whimsical, colorful painting is trusting yourself to go dark. It feels counterintuitive to drop a deep shadow into something so bright and playful. But contrast is what creates depth and form — even in a crazy rainbow.

So I went for it. Deepened the shadows, pushed values, added darks in just a few key spots. And the contrast it created was exactly right. You don't need to shadow everything — just commit in a couple of places and let them do the heavy lifting.

What This Painting Reminded Me

This entire experience — the sketch, the bright colors, the slower and more deliberate pace (this took me about an hour versus my usual 20 to 30 minutes) — reminded me that stepping outside your comfort zone doesn't have to mean abandoning who you are as an artist.

Maybe trying something new shows you a technique you can fold back into your regular work. Maybe it refreshes you so that returning to your signature style feels like coming home. Or maybe it opens a door to something new entirely. You won't know until you try.

What I do know is that while I painted this, I was having fun. And when I look at it, I smile. Even if it never sells. Even if it doesn't get into the show. Even if the only person who ever sees it is me — I put paint on paper, I played with color, and I felt something.

That's enough. That's always enough.