Add Some Unexpected Colors

Add Some Unexpected Colors

Today I’m sharing a couple of paintings I recently finished as a way to talk about adding unexpected color. White Angel Wing Peonies was a commissioned piece, and the peachy camellias were painted simply “just because.”

As I eased back into painting in the new year, I focused on layering slowly, staying loose, and letting myself play a bit. One thing that helped was intentionally adding a hue that wasn’t in my reference photo. Because if we copy the photo exactly… what’s the point? We could just take a picture.

One of the simplest ways to elevate your floral paintings is to add one color that technically doesn’t “belong.”

If your flower is mostly pinks…. Try tucking a soft, muted green into a shadow.

If your painting feels very warm… Slip in a whisper of cool blue or violet in the background.

If you’re working with white flowers…  Remember, white reflects everything around it — sky blues, surrounding greens, even the faintest blush tones.

Nature is never just one solid color. Even the most delicate petals hold subtle surprises.

That small, unexpected note of color creates harmony, movement, and depth. It keeps your painting from feeling flat or predictable.

In the White Angel Wing Peonies painting below, you can see where I’ve popped in some unexpected colors of teals and blues to give the petals a translucent quality. The muted tones of pinks, golds and purples are used for the shadow areas of the white petals. By creating multiple shadow colors, it creates interest and also helps connect parts of the painting together. 

In the Peachy Camellias painting below, I’ve included the brighter pinks into the thin branches and blended part ways into the background to suggest more flowers. The leaves in the reference photo were mostly a dark green with a white highlight but I added more teals and golds into the leaves. Also, I chose a light blue-green background instead of a normal pale blue because teal/turquoise is the complementary color to a peachy pink and it will make the flowers "glow".

So, before you call a piece finished, pause and ask yourself:

“Where could I add one unexpected note of color?”

It doesn’t need to shout.
It may barely be noticeable.

But it just might be the very thing that brings your painting to life.