Carniverous Plants

Have you been to Kew Gardens?  It is well worth going.  It provides me with allot of inspiration.  On a visit back in Spring I saw a number of things that peaked my interest, and that I took photographs of with perhaps the intention of painting.  I selected this one: 

 It can be found in the tropical green house, a sweaty, warm huimd room, slightly hidden in one corner of the main greenhouse.  It is a room of a carniverous plants. 

All such plants have a slightly alien aspect to them.  Particularly the ones in the photograph (left) which seem like strange bulbous eggs,  hanging maliciously on the log.

The log on which they are attached is also part of the appeal, with its crusty bark interwieved with the moss growing on it as is the stripy mouldy backdrop to it.  The log has a good colour range to it from the light yellow on the side to the dark almost black underneath. 

The growing green plant make a nice almost human contrast to the whole thing. 

My original plan was a strongly patterened background,  a bit like William Morris.  I though that this would make a nice contrast with the organic log and the strange red blobs.  
This did not work so I simplified the background and started layering on paint on the log using a pelette knife.  I also rduced the number of fly catchers to three. 

I decided to continue down this route.  The background was simplified even more to make a wavey gray more like the background in the original photograph.
The plant was retained only as a suggestion to provide contrast.  There was also a distinct suggestion of equine about the whole thing which these few green leaves helped to promote. 
More and more paint was added to the bark of the trunk and I also started to add on paint, with the pallett knife onto the fly catchers themselves so they became more bolbous.  
This is the first painting I've done where I've crusted paint on like this and I have to say it is quite a liberating experience. 
The earlier layers of paint add more texture and interest to the later ones.
The final stage was the addition of the moss in the form of light and dark green and yellow paint, blobbed on generously with a brush.