One tricky thing I encountered was the lighting. As you may recall, this subject is a composite of several actual blossoming stems that I put together on one imaginary branch. It is botanically accurate and if I hunted around in my azalea bushes, I just might have found a branch just like this. One thing I have to be sure to do to make it real and convincing is to make the light source consistent across all parts of the branch. We have only one sun, after all. In botanical work, by convention we paint the light source from above and over the left shoulder of the artist. My source photos aren't this way at all, since these blossoms were on three different sides of the shrub, and therefore the shaddows are cast in different directions. So as I drew them, I had to alter the shaddows to make it read the right way. You can't really tell from this poor quality scan, but you might be able to notice that there is a lighter side and a darker side to the blossom clusters. In the end, I hope it will look like I set up my easel and painted this branch at about 10:00 in the morning on a sunny day. When you see this painting, I want you to be able to imagine the blue sky above, a gentle breeze setting the graceful flower stamens in motion, birds chirping all around. Spring.
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