Gustavian Inspired Pastoral Painted Secretary

Gustavian style is so pretty!

Gustavian is Swedish with a French influence, which began when

King Gustav III started hanging out in France with King Louis XIV.

Gustav went home and copied Louis but put the Swedish spin on things.

Hence "Gustvian" style was born. 

 I gravitate towards the Gustavian color palette of pale blue, white, grey

and cream and decided to paint some landscape scenes on the panels of the 

small secretary desk, that would capture the essence of Gustavian style.

 Pastoral scenery is so serene and pretty and I have been 

doing a series of pieces with these types of landscapes,

the secretary is the latest in my "Gustavian phase". 

Each drawer has raised borders and I painted landscapes inside

each one, followed by gilding the raised part.

I painted a French Maison on the drop leaf as a nod to 

my Petite French Maison Dollhouse. 

 I used the gold color wax by Jolie Paint, and it highlighted the scenes nicely.
The scenes were painted with many of the colors from
 Jolie Paint's serenity collection.

This is before gilding.  I was torn about whether or not 

to add the gilding, because this looked more like a simple 

country look which was pretty too.

 It came out beautifully and adds to the room.  

Oh, and did you notice the lilac colored sofa with fringe?  

It is a Scalamandre sofa. I lucked out at an estate sale and I love this thing! 

These sofas run in the thousands, and that is out of my budget, 

so thank heavens for estate sales and other people with great taste! 

It looks pretty with all of my purple transfer ware,

 including the lamps that I have in this room.

Off in the dining room you can see some of the other pieces in the

 Gustavian series that I have created.  And there will be more to come,

because that is how it goes when I get obsessed by something.

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My Pastoral Landscapes

A pastoral landscape I painted is seen in this photograph featured in Romantic Country

magazine, Spring 2017 issue.  I don't think I have shared many of the paintings I created.

So lets have a look at them, shall we?

Pastoral landscape paintings are soothing and restful.  When I decorated

my home office I decided to paint some landscapes on the wall instead of 

hanging up artwork.  I framed them out with an exterior border so it looked

like a piece of artwork, and then I painted the interior area with various 

landscape scenes that conjured up the European countryside.

These were the first paintings I created and I absolutely loved them.

I made a mini movie in time lapse photography on how I created this painting,

and its on my Facebook page for those interested to see more of the process.

(Find my Facebook link on the sidebar of my blog)

They were such fun to create, so I ended up painting three for the walls in my office.

This was the staging area, where I covered the sideboard with a drop cloth and just added all the paint I owned.  I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to do these scenes, and lots of water and different size brushes to get the paint to flow.  I also used rags to create a mood on the borders.

Matthew Mead photographed the office for Where Women Create magazine in 2017.

You can see how the two landscapes anchor the back wall, creating a focal point behind my desk.

This was my favorite landscape painting.  I added a small building to the landscape,

trying to simulate a structure I saw at Versailles, in Marie Antoinette's Petite Trianon.

 Belvedere I believe it was called. Not exactly the same, but my interpretation.

These were all in the WWC magazine last year. 

Now this room has been repurposed as a guest bedroom.

  But I may be taking it back as my office this year as I miss the space.

This was a painting I did directly over another store bought painting, and it fit my living room so well.  One nice thing about painting pastorals is that they seem to fit any space, and you can add the colors that work well with your palette.  Imagine a pink sky if you had a lot of pink in your room. 

Here it is in progress, I start by doing the background with the horizon line separating the blue and the green. Then I build in the trees and highlight with light and dark shading. If I wanted to add some lilac or pink to the sky, you can imagine how different you can make the painting look just by doing that.

This large canvas was a fun painting project but a challenge.  I had to paint it outside.  Because it required so much paint, I used various paints, many of which were wall paints for the house.

Doing that also kept the colors within the palette I have going on in my home.

This huge canvas actually hides a door we don't use.

The room used to be so awkward, and this large painting served to make

 the room pretty and eliminate that door! Art with a purpose!

Most recently I painted a pastoral scene inside of my white piano. 

After painting the exterior to look like blue and white toile,

the idea came to me to put a landscape inside.

I have a feeling I will be painting more pastorals.  

You might want to give them a try yourself.

creating your own artwork is very satisfying. 

Look at how different the piano looks from plain white.

I even did a mini landscape on the music stand in the front of the piano!

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