Australian flame pea (pastel painting)

Hi everybody!

Many thanks for @bambuka for inviting to this community!

If you don't know, I am a digital artist, but sometimes I paint with traditional materials as well.

Thinking about what I can draw in February, I didn't come up with anything better than exotic flowers.

This flower, for example, has a complicated name Chorizema cordatum (or Australian flame pea)
I liked it by colorful petals as butterfly

Reference from Pinterest
For the image of this flower, I took tinted dark green cardboard with a smooth surface and dry pastel in bright colors.

Sketch

Approximately this will be the color palette (in the process of work, I added a couple more contrasting colors - in particular, dark green and deep purple

I started the drawing with the stem of the flower.
To do this, I used two colors of green and warm yellow. Lighting is uneven due to large colors - presumably coming from somewhere to the right.
Somewhere on the shadow side I add touches of turquoise color

The flowers now.
The lower petals are pink-crimson, turning into a very dark one towards the middle (that's why I took a purple crayon)

The upper petals have a rich orange color (because of this, it is possible that the flower is called "flame pea"), but another side of it is darker, the unopened bud also has a dark color, I painted it in red

To show the smooth curve of the petal, I paint it with a dark terracotta color closer to the core and make a few yellow strokes closer to the edge, but not the very edge.
When all the flowers were drawn, I slightly feathered the strokes so that the individual flowers mixed up and created a smooth blending.
And I also decided to highlight the two central flowers with a contrasting green color
Closer to the edge of the leaf, this light green color will be shaded with dark green.

With this dark green color, I emphasize the flower stem from the illuminated side.
And I strongly shade the background green colors, fitting them into the color of the cardboard

So... last step for details.
I take some pastel pencils for it and draw a veins on the petals

Somewhere I refine the contours, somewhere, on the contrary, I smooth out too sharp strokes.
Yes, I think now my drawing is ready!

A flower in the middle of winter... if you don't live somewhere in the tropics, you can draw it.
I'll be glade if my drawing like to someone

With Love...