I have wanted to paint a mural in my home for as long as I can remember but landlords don’t usually take kindly to such thing so I had to wait until I had my own house.

Then what to paint?

Flowers seemed obvious given the subject matter in my artwork. I love all flowers and paint a wide variety, but my favourite flowers of all time are Hellebores. Helleborus niger. 

I’ve loved them since I was a child and my mother grew them in her rose garden. She called them Winter Roses and they would bloom when her beloved roses weren’t.

She would often pick them and put vases of them on our dining room table, sometimes with snow drops or daffodils or freesias or whatever else was blooming in her garden at the time.

I return to these gorgeous and unusual blooms time and again in my artwork so I felt they were a fitting choice for a mural. Now painting in a large format or on walls is not within my comfort zone, so I spent some time sketching simple hellebores in preparation.

I will probably go back and turn these sketches into paintings later I think!

So after my sketching session I pinned them up on the inspiration board in my studio, grabbed a soft graphite stick and made a start on the wall, loosely drawing outlines of the petals and leaves.

Next, I began to fill in the shapes with colour and added some detail.

Once I’d filled in the details and outlined the flowers and leaves I was done!

Next came tidying the studio, which is a regular job that never seems to get easier. I’m a messy artist and tend to shift the clutter aside to continue creating instead of putting it neatly away, so a regular tidy every few months is needed.

I also decided to hang a bunch of my hellebore paintings in here to compliment the mural. 

I’m delighted with the results! The colours really liven up the yellow walls. Just when I was thinking of repainting them I’ve fallen in love with the colour all over again.

What do you think?