Cooktown Orchids
by R. Janette Graham
Queensland, Australia

You can see more of Janette's china painting and jewellery on her Janri Designs site; ( at the time of writing, this also includes some of her orchid jewellery series.)

Have you ever painted your state's floral emblem? This is how I came to paint a series of Cooktown orchids, Australia's showiest orchid species and Queensland's own floral emblem.
A few months ago a neighbour commissioned me to do some china painting with an Australian theme. She was going overseas, and wanted to take some original Australian art with her as gifts. She did not have any particular china in mind, except that the pieces had to be small; and they had to depict something Australian, such as wattle or bottlebrush.
Fortunately I had a catalogue from a local supplier on hand, so together we chose some small pieces: a tall, straight sided vase, a smaller shaped vase, and a napkin holder. The remaining two pieces would be brooches, which I would make myself.
I made several rough sketches of bottlebrush and wattle over the next few days, and just for variety also included some sketches of Cooktown orchids, our state's floral emblem. When my neighbour saw the orchid sketches, she immediately chose those. She actually had some Cooktown orchids growing in her garden, and I never knew!
Her orchid was flowering at the time, so I was able to see the flowers on the plant for the first time. It was growing on a tree, so I had to stretch to photograph it - one of those occasions when I really wish that I had a few more inches! Here is one of the best images:
At my neighbour's invitation I also picked a spray and later made some quick sketches. As you can see, the flowers have some quite interesting shapes:
These flowers were a little paler than most that I had seen, so I checked what the literature had to say about Cooktown orchids. To my surprise I found that they come in a range of colours from white through to mauves and even reddish-lilacs, sometimes with a white border.
Now I had too many colours to choose from! I finally decided to stylise the orchids, rather than to paint them realistically, and where possible to introduce a range of colours. This would also let me adapt an orchid design that I had done several years before.
Since my work would be representing Australian art overseas, I planned the designs carefully, working them out on the computer first.
The initial designs for the straight sided vase looked like this:.
As you can see, the design is built up from the single orchid in the previous image: repeating it at various angles and sizes creates an interesting effect. Once you have the first orchid drawn, it is fairly easy to do this on the computer - and to keep doing it until you find the best result. The vertical lines show where two coloured stripes go, slightly offset on each "side" of the vase.
The napkin holder was designed in the same way:
- as was the shaped vase:

This vase too has stripes, but down one side only; they are not visible in the sketch to the left. At this stage I also added some colour to my designs, as in the image above. This was mainly to establish the relative values, as I expected to change the colours when I began painting.
I printed out the designs on tracing paper - another advantage of using a computer! - transferred them to the china, and penned them in various shades of blue and pink. The coloured stripes down the sides of the vases were added at this stage too, with the aid of masking tape, and the pieces then fired.
For the next fire I established the designs in various shades of blue, using an airbrush:
The final colours were established by overspraying several pinks and blues. These colours were used on the reverse sides too, creating mottled backgrounds to support the main designs. I also sprayed "highlights" on some of the main orchids, using a pink metallic paint. This changes colour as the light catches it, I like to think in imitation of the way light and shade play across the flowers in their natural habitat.
As a final touch I also outlined the painted areas on the napkin holder in liquid bright gold, although this is not visible in the photograph:
My neighbour had also asked for two brooches, so I developed a jewellery range as well. I made the shapes from porcelain slip, glazed them, and painted miniature variations of the above designs. As an experiment I also included some with a slightly dull glaze, in more pastel-like colours. These turned out to be the most successful, and in fact my neighbour changed her mind when she saw them and chose a brooch and matching pendant.
To the left are 2 items from this jewellery range:
This was a rewarding commission: my neighbour was pleased with the finished pieces, and said the gifts created a lot of interest; and I developed a new jewellery range that I later put on my website. And of course I still have the sketches I started with, ready for the next time someone asks me to paint bottlebrush, or wattle - which also happens to be our national floral emblem.

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