Painting and Decorating Furniture with Floral Designs

CHAPTER 1

DESIGN

Design is made up of form, shape, colour and detail. When you look at a piece of furniture, you know instinctively whether you like the design or not. Putting the wrong angles and sizes together is like putting the wrong colours together; it halts the flow of a pleasing design.

Design is ever evolving, combining materials, pigments and paints from the past and bringing them to the present. For artists, crafters and designers, this is an enriching and creative challenge. Throughout history, artists have returned to the rich resource of floral themes and, if you plan to repaint a piece of furniture, then it can be helpful and inspiring to know of the designs that have gone before. A book that I regularly turn to for inspiration and ideas of historically global design is The Dictionary of Ornament by Albert Racinet. It is a wonderful book containing an abundance of floral borders and designs. Another favourite book is Renaissance Ornament from the 15th to 17th Century, by The Cambridge Library of Ornamental Art. It is a book that is rich in delicate botanical forms and foliage, sometimes depicted in their natural forms but also stylised so the pool of ideas, compositions and colours is immense. Picking out the floral parts of a design from a book or any other resource can help form your own design; you can enlarge it, reduce it, change the colour or link it to a separate design to create your own composition for painting your piece of furniture.

An early nineteenth-century corner cupboard. The design of the artwork is beautifully 'rounded' to complement the overall design of the cabinet.

AN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Baroque design flourished in seventeenth-century Europe and through the ages has continued to attract us with its extravagance and elaborate detail. I have found a wealth of baroque motifs to use for designs and inspiration from a book called Baroque Ornament and Designs by Jacques Stella. There are lovely ornate and lavish motifs including florals, leaves, birds, shells, acorns and more, and all are available for reproduction.

A wonderful example of an antique Venetian Baroque-style bed in Italian 1900s lacquered wood. (Image by kind consent of Di Mano in Mano, Italy)

The Victorian era was a period of great wealth and power that extended across the globe, and included a rapid advancement in the arts. Designers began to take full advantage of the era of industrialisation, allowing lavish floral designs to be mass-produced onto furniture, wallpaper and textiles.

A lovely example of the flowing floral forms typical of Art Nouveau design. (Credit: PublicDomainPictures.net)

Art Nouveau emerged at the very end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the Edwardian era at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. In Britain, the most well-known designs are by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, where the style of flowing natural forms of flowers, vines and leaves are combined with geometry. Well-known examples of Art Nouveau can be seen at the entrances to the Paris Metro stations. The end of Art Nouveau occurred at the beginning of the First World War.

This example of Art Deco design shows the difference in style from Art Nouveau, with its more geometric shapes and Egyptian influence. (Credit: PublicDomainsPictures.net)

Artists trying to unite fine arts with a society that was becoming increasingly industrialised created Art Deco, which became the prominent artistic style during the interwar period in Britain and was originally known as 'the style moderne' until scholars renamed it Art Deco in 1968. It represents a design style in furniture, architecture and the arts that, although influenced by Art Nouveau, became a style of its own. Art Deco leant more towards cubism, rich in colour, highly stylised foliage and geometric patterns.

From the Baroque, Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco eras to the present day, fashion has not proved fickle to the longevity of nature in design.

William Morris 'Fruit' design. This beautiful vibrant design is still available to purchase from Morris & Co. (Credit: Pictureboxblue.com)

It is important to acknowledge William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, born in 1834. His love of nature began at a very young age, and he used plants for inspiration in many of his designs. Although he understood, and was inspired by, nature he did not believe in copying plants literally; instead, he used the beauty from nature as patterns for his designs.

PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

The word 'design' covers enormous swathes of our everyday life: interior design, kitchen design, product design, flooring design, furniture design, fabric design... and so the list goes on. Almost everything we look at has been designed.

When thinking about how you are going to paint your chosen piece of furniture, it helps to take a careful look at the colours, furniture and designs already in the room. Taking photographs helps, and cuttings from magazines can also help. I have a collection of flowers, leaves and plants that I have left to dry, mainly chosen for their shape, colouring and structure. This means when I am deciding on a design for a piece of furniture, I have a bank of items to choose from. I also keep a large folder of photographs so that if I want to paint something that is out of season, I have reference photographs to use.

Contrast

One basic principle of design is contrast. When someone says that something needs to 'pop' more, it means that more contrast is needed to make it stand out. To put it simply, design is something that looks good and creates an optimal visual experience.

Composition

I look at design as an accumulation of many parts built from observation, balance, shape, size, light and shade, colours, depth and position; all these things go together to form the composition. When putting together a composition to paint onto your furniture, you may find that the rule of three can be helpful. It is the first number we come to where a grouping doesn't have to be formed. For example, if you are painting three pears, you could have two standing and one lying down. Three pears are pleasing to the eye, but you may find that four pears can look cluttered.

Trompe l'oil

The literal meaning of trompe l'oil is 'trick the eye' and this technique is used a lot in design to do exactly that. Originally, when buildings were built with very thick walls and narrow windows, there was plenty of wall space inside that could be opened up by painting murals using trompe l'oil. The starting point with trompe l'oil is to manipulate light and shade, and work out which direction you want the light to come from and follow the direction of light throughout. A simple but subtle example of this is to paint a geometric panel using light and shade to trick the eye. I created the following example on the computer, but the design is the same when painted by hand. As you can see, the light on the frame comes from the top left-hand corner, which puts the upper and left-hand side of the moulding in shadow, while the moulding on the opposite side is in the light.

A lovely example of trompe l'oil, swags of fruit and flowers pinned to a white wall, together with moths and other insects by Martin van Dorne 1770. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Trompe l'oeil effect - using light and shade to trick the eye.

Repetition and Pattern

In design, repetition is one of the elements that unifies a design, such as in wallpapers, in fabrics or hand-painted onto walls and furniture. As an example of repetition, I drew a simple daisy pattern forming a circle, using inks and a dip pen. I repeated the design several times with a white background and then replaced the white background with red, which made the design 'pop'. The white space between the daisies allowed the composition to breathe, while allowing the daisy parts of the design to stand out.

Simple pen and ink design of daisy heads in a circle on paper.

Same daisy design repeated on a white background.

With the background of the daisy circles changed to red, the contrast immediately makes the design 'pop'.

Another example of pattern and repetition started with painting a small magnolia bud. It was then cut out and glued to paper. I then repeated it by joining the bud in pairs and then flipped them upside down to repeat again. The space between the repeated buds creates a sense of rhythm. To allow the white petal of the magnolia to stand out, I replaced the white background with a pale green.

A magnolia bud, simply painted with inks and then cut out and glued on paper.

The same magnolia bud repeated and flipped across the page, then turned upside down and repeated again. Both the buds and the leaves form a pattern when joined. A pale green background helped the white magnolia petal stand out.

Balance and Movement

All parts of a design carry a visual weight, so your composition should create balance and movement. Movement is the way that your eye travels over the design, so positioning and emphasis contribute to this.

As an example, I painted this refreshing and colourful poppy design using a small sponge dipped in paint. The impression is of petals blowing in the wind, creating lots of movement,...